Freedom has Many Faces
by In-the-Synthflesh
Summary: Following the battle between the Na'vi and the RDA, a Na'vi woman with a painful past and one of the few remaining humans on Pandora reclaim for themselves the lives they once only lived vicariously and discover a new path to freedom and a future. OCxNorm
1. Chapter 1

Freedom Has Many Faces

Chapter 1

* * *

One minute she was with them. The next, she was not. The same thing happened every morning.

Sometimes Matuei acknowledged that it was rather odd that she should be able to remember the old feelings so clearly at the very moment when she was most conscious of them no longer existing. As the sun began to blot through the translucent green membrane of the leaf hammock around her, illuminating each reddish vein and washing the shadows of the occupied leaves immediately above hers across her face, she heard the chattering hum begin to rise. A moment later her eyes opened, and it cut out.

There were times when this eerie hum seemed to collect into a regular, gently throbbing melody; it was only when you focused on one component in particular that the lack of synchronicity between the individual signals became obvious. There were some members of the Omaticaya who never felt an overarching rhythm, even in these first quiet moments when they were waking up. This was not entirely unsurprising: discriminating between the numerous frequencies and feelings was essential to navigating the forest and to hunting, and so for most of the clan a more general grasp of nerval sensations was not only unimportant, but also tended to interfere with their concentration. Moreover, they all knew from the devastation of Hometree that immediate awareness of one's surroundings from the first instant of awakening could make all the difference between life and death. One of the few times Matuei considered herself lucky was when she heard from her friends how they would occasionally sit up with a start in the middle of the night, senses screaming, every muscle tensed and ready for escape. More often than not a chain reaction would kick off, and tens of clan members would be hit by the same feeling within seconds of each other. The next morning, whoever started the chain would apologise.

'I can't help it. That ash has settled in my brain. I thought I had brushed it all off my body, but my eyes drank it up too quickly for my tears to wash it away. Sometimes my dreams kick it up and it clouds my head.'

Secretly, Matuei was embarrassed by her reaction to these incidents. They upset her, of course, but in a perverse way they often felt like her only connection to the way things had once been. The clan's night terrors were a phantom feeling, just like the stirrings she sometimes felt at the base of her skull. The original stimulus was long gone, but it still resurfaced every now and again. Whenever the destruction of Hometree charged back unbidden into the collective consciousness of the Omaticaya, the faint wail she sometimes heard in the distant sky no longer felt like her individual burden. For a few precious, horrible moments, the pain was shared.

She sighed and gently unfolded her hammock. The branches around her were dotted with other older clanspeople eating and filing splinters off their bows. A small group of younger warriors were already clambering up to the canopy via a tight vertical cluster of vines and branches, nimbly hopping from one foothold to the next and summoning their _ikran_ with short sharp barks.

'Out hunting this early?' Matuei murmured.

Her friend Nikal looked up from her bow. 'Nah, they're just bored. One of the men thought he saw something interesting floating belly-up in the river and now they're all going to take a look. Some Sky-People rubbish or something.' She plucked a large pink fruit from a makeshift leather thong that hung on her hip. 'I've brought you some breakfast. I took a bite already, hope you don't mind.'

Even with a full mouthful missing from it, the fruit was still big enough that Matuei needed to hold it with both hands. 'A little … over-generous, isn't it?'

'Not for the work we're doing today, it isn't,' said Nikal. 'Tilling, remember? We've all got to build up our strength.'

It had been decided soon after the conflict with the Sky-People that the site where the Hometree had stood would not be left unoccupied. Instead it was to be restored, and this meant that the ashy soil had to be tilled. Seeds had begun to fall on the ground almost immediately, but most of them had failed to grow. Just as they needed to take from nature, the Na'vi had to give something back, and in this case it certainly needed an extra helping hand, or rather, a thousand helping hands, of which Matuei and Ninal were only two pairs. They worked with tools carved from the unburned remains of Hometree, hoping the blessed wood would speed the process along, but it was still very hard work.

'Aik, look at your queue!' Nikal smacked Matuei's arm. 'You've been scratching it again. The poor thing's red raw.'

'I have not!'

'I know you, Matuei, you are a compulsive liar! Why do I bother when all you do is pick at it. You may not think I see, but I do!' She gestured towards her face and bore her fangs. 'These are the eyes of _toruk_! I see everything!'

'Well, you clearly didn't see that this fruit is going mouldy.'

'What gratitude!' Nikal grabbed Matuei's head and pulled it towards her. She placed her hand below the pink stump that was all that remained of Matuei's queue and sighed.

'I'm sorry that I shout at you like this. I'm not really angry at you. I'm angry at that bastard Suhaa-'

Matuei's shoulders drew up tense about her neck. 'Please, Nikal, don't say his name.'

'If I don't, it only robs you further of your dignity. I love you too much to reopen this scar he has left. If Suhaar had had his way, you would have been lost to us altogether.' She cupped Matuei's chin in her hands. 'Don't live in shame.' Then, with a small smile, she withdrew and prepared to descend down the branches below. 'And don't pick.'

Matuei sighed and returned to her breakfast, chuckling at the gaping hole where her friend had bitten right through to the core. She knew that Nikal took a quiet delight in showing her reluctance to care for her, and one that often expressed itself through pretending to give her 'table scraps'. Nikal would protect Matuei to the last breath, but in no way would she ever let herself become a maid. Just as the line of respect between the two appeared to have been re-established, Nikal would always push it, would never let herself be taken for granted. Gestures like this bite said it all, but always with a smile: I still have my pride. Show me that you still have yours, my friend, if you dare.

Nikal, after all, had been a brilliant hunter in earlier years. Like all Na'vi she had a firm respect for the overriding sanctity of communal life and she chanted no less enthusiastically than anyone else when gatherings called for it. Yet she treasured self-sufficiency and the thrills of the lone chase above all else. She had in fact been as close to ruthless as a Na'vi hunter could be. When others would give up on the pursuit of especially tricky prey, muttering that fate clearly had other intentions, Nikal simply decided that she was waiting for her second wind and battled through her exhaustion. Even when her legs were ready to collapse under her, her eye remained steady. When she finally let her arrow fly, she rarely missed.

'Just her and I,' she had recounted some years before, after a particularly intense and lengthy trek. 'The most beautiful _yerik_, standing proud in the twilight of her life. Her fan was torn and tattered, her hide tattooed with scars. An exceptional mother who, I have no doubt, must have battled any creature that tried to snatch from her numerous litters within an inch of its life. It rained soon after I first caught sight of her and the shower washed away all but the slightest trace of her passing. There was blood in her footprints. I knew the wound was fatal and extremely painful, maybe a bite from a _nantang_. She was going somewhere quiet and isolated to die alone. She knew it would be very slow and that there would be weeks of suffering before she went.

'I tracked her for three days. She knew I was there the whole time. Our eyes met several times before I finally took her down. I swear to you now, I have never seen such a level of understanding pass between myself and another.'

'So much for your seduction techniques, Kith!' shouted one of the men, slapping Nikal's mate hard on the back. The other men listening to Nikal's story burst into raucous laughter and beat the ground with their fists.

'Lost your mate to a _yerik_! Classic!'

'That's what you get for spending so much time hanging out at home whilst your woman warrior here does all the legwork!'

'Or is it not only your bow that's starting to rot from disuse?'

'Okay, okay, that's enough!' smiled Kith in his usual good-humoured manner.

Nikal was still caught up in reverie. 'At one point she looked me straight in the face. No fear. I could almost hear her say it: I know who you are and why you have come. Hold, and don't worry: when it is time we will both get what we need. Just this look of total acceptance. The following day she led me to her last resting place.' Nikal grinned, mainly to herself. 'She still put up a hell of a fight when I lifted my bow. Crazy _yerik_ wasn't letting me get away without any bruises. But when it happened … she looked almost grateful. Like she couldn't have hoped for a better end to her life.'

Age caught up with Nikal eventually, and her accuracy began to deteriorate. She was starting to stiffen up. It was sad to see those same urges still flickering behind her eyes from time to time, even if she seemed to think that she hid them well behind the pleasure she took in the smaller tasks closer to home that made up her days now. No more three-day hunts for her. Most of their people had looked quietly apprehensive, if determined, before the great battle with the Sky-People, but Nikal had looked strangely relieved. Her old self had been given a chance to stretch its legs. Despite knowing the high stakes involved, she fought with gleeful abandon.

Matuei smiled and took a final bite from the fruit, carefully avoiding the softer dark patches where it had started to rot. She hadn't exactly been a shrinking violet herself during the conflict. She had taken several lives with her spear that day and for a brief moment she again felt at one with the clan. She immersed herself in the studied precision of their movements together and their tiered system of attack, where the lines of warriors rose and fell like waves to allow each row time to reload their bows. Like the growing kinship she felt when others were shaken by their memories of the destruction of Hometree, she had felt some guilt in enjoying that now rare feeling of complete union. Did it really take the loss of so many lives – lives on both the Na'vi and human sides, with individual histories, family, friends – for her to feel whole again?

She turned back to her leaf hammock and reached inside, taking out a small jar carved from stone and a rolled up leaf about the size of her hand. The jar contained an anti-inflammatory salve she had mixed together from sap and several plant oils. She applied it to the nub at the back of her head and winced: the severed nerves still stung a little when touched. She sealed the small leaf around them and lifted her hair clear of the freshly bandaged stump.

Unmounted _ikran _circled lazily overhead, their vast shadows breaking through the morning light that shone through the canopy. Matuei stretched her body out to its full length and eased backwards then forwards like a cat, pulling the muscles of her back and legs taut. For a moment her pupils dilated, judging the distances and depths below and searching for obstacles to her descent, and then she leapt into freefall.

* * *

The familiar sounds of the forest were beginning to reclaim the site where Hometree had stood only seven months before. For a long time after the attack it had been completely silent around here. Because nothing was growing from the ash-choked ground, no animals went there to eat, so most of the time the area was completely deserted save for scores of clan members working to clear the charred debris. Once or twice they had to stop and form a clearing for the occasional herd of _angstik_ that had once marked the woodlands directly adjacent to Hometree as their territory. These were tense moments: the enormous hammer-headed creatures were clearly anxious and unsure, and if one bolted out of nerves the rest would undoubtedly stampede. The older Na'vi regarded these passings with glaring, tight-lipped expressions. The bombardment hadn't just thrown the Omaticaya into chaos; it sent entire ecosystems reeling too.

Matuei was one of the first to arrive that morning, and the day's work hadn't really started in earnest. She spotted Nikal a little way off, talking with her mate. Kith was sitting before a loom suspended from the branch from a tree at the edge of the clearing. As he spoke with Nikal, his long fingers moved gracefully over the threads stretched over the wooden framework, steadily weaving them together with seemingly automatic movements. When he saw Matuei coming towards them, he grinned and stood up.

'_Kaltxi_ Kith,' called Matuei, raising her hand to greet him. 'So you're finally back?'

'Not a moment too soon, believe me,' said Kith. 'I was just thanking Nikal for the collar you girls put together for me.' He slipped his thumb under a string of beads made up of various shells and pieces of dried fruit from the trees native to this part of the Omaticaya's territory, some of which Kith had already removed and eaten during his absence, as had been the intention. 'I can't remember how many times I needed a reminder of home whilst I was out there. I really appreciated having this with me.'

'You're very welcome, brother,' said Matsuei. 'Was there much to do?'

Kith's ears dropped. His whole body seemed to sink. 'Too much. My group hardly made any headway. Nine days out there, and we didn't even make it past the first point on our planned route.' He squeezed his eyes shut and sat down at the loom again. 'There were times out there you couldn't tell the human bodies from the Na'vi. I saw the next group in the neighbouring grove. They'd given up trying. They were digging a mass grave. You tell yourself each one deserves a proper burial, but really … I was _glad_ whenever a _nantang_ appeared to snatch a corpse away.'

Nikal bent down beside her mate and rubbed her brow soothingly against his, murmuring words of reassurance to him.

'I see you, my brave one. Your pain is mine. Find relief in me.'

Matuei grasped her left arm, feeling rather guilty that she had asked Kith anything at all about the expedition. These trips had become so frequent that it was obvious without even questioning the returned parties that the entire process was progressing extremely slowly. The forests were still full of bodies from the battle with the humans, and whilst they remained unburied they posed a significant health risk. The various tribes of Pandora were already too far diminished to withstand further unnecessary losses from disease. Numerous groups were sent out in rotation to perform burial rites, and several higher ranking members of the tribe, including the new _Olo'eyktan_ Jake and his bride Neytiri, had stationed themselves outside on an almost permanent basis to manage the lengthy operation.

Presently Kith straightened up. 'I think it's turning out well.'

He gestured towards the banner draped over his loom. The threads were dyed in rich greens and streams of burgundy, colours that simultaneously denoted death and rebirth for the Omaticaya, and woven into a startlingly intricate pattern centred around a repeated series of diamonds strung together end-to-end. It was a classic cyclical motif usually only featured at the holiest sites during periods of plague that tended to arise when Eywa found it necessary to counter the threat of overpopulation. In loose terms the motif signified, 'Wherever Eywa strikes with fist or fever, she forever nurtures. Though she may feed us from the cup of death, the drink itself is mother's milk.'

'It's beautiful,' said Matuei, tracing the pattern with a finger that barely touched the fabric. 'You must feel very honoured to be permitted to weave this motif, Kith. I have seldom seen it more brilliantly executed.'

'Peh! You have no idea what a pain it is for your mate to become head weaver!' hissed Nikal, swinging her arm around Kith's shoulders protectively. 'All these young girls always making eyes at him every opportunity they get, draping those skinny little bodies of theirs over the nearest tree. If I thrash my fangs any harder at them, I'll grind my teeth down into dust within minutes!'

Kith surreptitiously stuck the tip of his tongue out between his teeth and shook with silent laughter. Matuei giggled back. Nikal noticed and gave one of his ears a hard tug.

'_He_ loves it, of course! Those girls have no idea what a wet blanket he was when he was their age. You remember, Matuei? You remember all those conversations the two of us had at night when we were finally able to get away from all the other boys who were chasing us around?' She raised her voice a few octaves and gently swung her body from side to side in a girlish gesture. '"Oh, Nikal, don't be so hard on Kith! It's obvious he adores you! Riding his _ikran_ back to front doesn't necessarily mean he was dropped on his head as a baby. I'm sure he was just doing it to … to impress you!" Oh, I was impressed, I was _very _impressed. That squealing he was making the whole time was magnificent! I've never met a female Na'vi who could reach that pitch before, much less a man! Pfffffft! Here he is, the love of my life, the great _Ikran Makto_!'

Kith stood up with his arms akimbo and struck a mock-heroic pose, then joined in with the women's laughter. Suddenly several thundering drum beats shuddered through the air.

'Well, back to work,' sighed Matuei. 'Good luck with your banner, Kith.'

Kith thanked her, and she trudged to the edge of the clearing to fetch her and Nikal's ploughs. They worked alongside hundreds of other Na'vi men and women each assigned an individual three-foot wide strip of ground, dragging the tools through the soil in regular heaving movements in time with the steady rhythm of three gourd drums at the centre of the site. Despite the monotony of the work time seemed to pass quickly, and soon the shadows of the trees stretched over Matuei. The head drummer called for a short break, and she fell to her knees, puffing heavily and wincing at the shooting pains across her shoulders.

'You only feel it when you stop, don't you?' panted Nikal, who was wiping the sweat from her face with a thin papery leaf taken from her belt. 'I swear they're beating those damn drums faster than they were yesterday. I'll go and see if Kith has any drinking water going spare.'

Matuei nodded and shook out her hair. She noticed with some annoyance that the ground behind her plough looked almost identical to that in front of it. In truth, their tools weren't made to deal with a job of this scale, and it showed. She cursed under her breath and tried to think of ways to improve the plough's efficacy. As she considered this, she looked around her. She hardly paid attention to what she was actually seeing until something unexpected made her stop.

To her right she spotted a human crouched beside the edge of the bare soil, examining something she could not see from her angle with great interest. She recognised him as one of the humans Jake had allowed to remain on Pandora out of friendship and services rendered to the clans. She could not remember exactly, but she vaguely recollected seeing him speak in Na'vi. She got to her feet and approached him tentatively. From over his shoulder she could see that a small outcrop of purple flowers had caught his attention. He was moving his hands around them warily, not daring to touch the plant but instead apparently judging its height, estimating the level of its growth.

'_Luxae_,' she murmured.

'Woah!' The human shot to his feet at the sound of her voice and stumbled backwards, words tumbling out of his mouth in what she assumed to be some Earth language, his mother tongue. 'Uh, I didn't touch it, I wasn't touching anything, I-' He readjusted the visor-like mask over his face nervously and spoke in Na'vi. 'Sorry, you scared me.'

'Sorry. I was just curious to see what you were looking at,' Matuei said, taking a step back. She pointed at the plant. '_Luxae_. They're a good sign. The forest is coming back.'

'Yes, very good.' He coughed. '_Great_, really. More and more of them are sprouting up every day around here. Most of them are pretty well hidden in the undergrowth, but there must be hundreds of them now.'

He was starting to settle down again, his voice gradually becoming steadier. Matuei was surprised by how clear and accurate his elocution was. He even compensated in some measure for the words and sounds that were not so well-suited for a human mouth. She would never have guessed by looking at him that he could speak with such grace. He was tall and gawky by human standards and his movements were awkward, as if he hardly knew how to handle his limbs. His face was long and his features jagged, little softened by a sandy dusting of hair about his chin and lips. His skin was pitted in places and rather unclean, as if he had not washed his face in several days.

'We're doing a good job here. I mean-' He lowered his head and smiled. 'You're doing a good job here. Me, I'm just digging around in the mud.'

'No. We need that kind of perspective. We need to notice more of these things. It's very, um, mechanical, working like this. Sometimes I spend so long going over the same few inches of ground I forget to look up and see what's already growing around me.'

'Oh! Well.' The man pointed up at a canopy of blue leaves beginning to stretch out from the edge of the woods and traced his index finger along the plants in front of them. 'Well, there's _cyato_, I didn't expect to see that here so soon, uh, and there, I don't know the Na'vi word for them, but those are glassroots. There's some _pamtseoll_ starting to come back to the left of them. Those were all burned away when – um, when it happened. They're pretty resilient, though, so I'm not surprised to see them sprouting again.'

'What a relief this all is,' sighed Matuei with a wide grin. 'You know, there were many who thought nothing would ever grow again here.'

'Well, uh, Eywa will always find a way.'

It was the first time he had sounded artificial. There was much of the human in how he said that, as if he were clumsily appropriating a Na'vi 'catchphrase' he had learned. She realised then that this man had had little direct contact with the People. She did not doubt that he was knowledgeable about their ways, but it was just that: knowledge. Clinical, remote, quite different from actual experience. He had probably read a great deal, but it had not been field-tested – yes, she knew some of those curious human phrases too. For a Na'vi there was little difference between knowledge and practice, and things were learned primarily through application. No matter how much anyone tried to prepare you for your first flight with your _ikran_, when it came to bonding with it you were still on your own, learning from your own mistakes as you went along. She had not really considered that for some human beings, the path was quite different.

'Matuei.'

'Huh? Sorry, I don't think I know that word.'

'It's my name.'

'Oh! Right! Nice to meet you, Matuei. I'm Norm.'

Matuei had heard that name somewhere before. She recalled that this particular person had been singled out in a previous meeting.

'Did you ever walk with us, Norm?' she asked. 'As a dream-walker, I mean.'

'I don't know about "with", but, yeah, I did have an avatar.'

'What happened?'

'I was … _it_ was fatally wounded when we were fighting the RDA. It's as good as dogmeat now.' He adjusted his mask again. Behind the glass, he was smiling sadly. 'I was incredibly lucky, really. That kind of thing can send the human driver's body into shock, even cardiac arrest.'

'Driver?' Matuei shook her head. 'I'm sorry. It is a little out of my experience.'

'Avatar, dream-walkers, whatever term you prefer, they're remotely controlled by human beings. By their minds, I mean, whilst the human body's at rest in a sort of cocoon, I guess you could call it. It wasn't designed to be continuous, though. For the purposes our avatars were intended to work towards, we'd have to rotate between being conscious as avatars and conscious as humans. It's a link between two bodies, through one mind. I'd compare it with your neural bonds with the creatures out here – _tsahaylu_ – if that weren't considered, y'know, a form of blasphemy. But there are similarities. Both bodies share the pain if one gets hurt, for example.'

Matuei looked over her shoulder and spotted Nikal standing with her back to her. Every now and again she would glance at Matuei with a quizzical tilt of her head. Norm kept talking. His experience had caught up with his academic knowledge in this instance.

'I like that term, dream-walker, but it's much more complicated than that. It's never just like waking up. It's extremely disorientating, going from Na'vi back to human. Lots of confusion, nausea, obviously you feel like you've lost four or five feet of your body in the space of a second.' Norm laughed. 'Matter of fact, it's the one part I don't miss. But yes, it can be extremely dangerous, and in the early days people _did _die because of it. Tens of them. Trauma can pass from the avatar to the original body so easily. It's a problem the scientists never managed to iron out completely.'

He cleared his throat, noticing that Matuei was now gesturing to Nikal with an impatient but submissive shake of the palm of her hand.

'Sorry, I'm probably boring you here. This stuff is completely irrelevant now.'

'No, no. I can understand in a way,' murmured Matuei. She looked back over her shoulder again and bit her lip. 'It's nice talking to you, Norm, but perhaps I had better get back to work.'

'Yeah, me too.' He slipped a small dog-eared notebook out from his pocket. 'Maybe I'll see you around.'

'Maybe.'

Norm pulled a sharpened pencil out of the notebook's wire binding and started to sketch the rough outline of the crop of purple flowers nearest to him, marking each constituent part with an approximation of its length. As Matuei's shadow slipped away, he happened to look after her and saw the wrapped-up growth on the back of her head hanging stiffly among her flowing black hair. He stared down at his feet silently. He continued drawing.

* * *

Author's note: Wow, I haven't been back to in years. Please excuse the cheesy title and the heavy reliance on OCs – yes, yes, I know, the road to hell is paved with eyeball-searingly bad self-insertionist "original" characters. Since I'm not really a fan of 'chosen one' narratives (just one of several reasons I can't say I particularly 'loved' Avatar) and since the communal aspect of the Na'vi seems such a significant element, I figured that in this case shifting the focus to other members of the Omaticaya wouldn't be so much against the spirit of the original text as it might be in another franchise. I have tried to manage my OCs carefully, without turning them into either Mary Sues or angsty tortured souls. I'm headed for an upbeat if hopefully unconventional ending with this one, not a tragic wander around in the doldrums. I have also done my best to respect the canon couplings established in the film. In saying this, I understand that some might see Norm/Trudy as a canon coupling, but personally I thought one of the better aspects of Avatar was that it didn't shoehorn Trudy into one of those hastily set-up relationships between incompatible secondary characters. As the best character in the film, the one who most successfully maintained the tradition of more intriguing female characters in James Cameron's films, and one whose personal struggle was already sadly neglected through much of the script, Trudy deserves so much better.

I hope that you enjoy this first chapter and I thank anyone who takes the time to read it and indeed post a comment/review on it.

P.S. I made up some of the flora featured here. The animals, meanwhile, are all from the film. Given the Na'vi pov, I decided to use their Na'vi names, even if it did involve many tedious wanderings around the Avatar Wiki site.


	2. Chapter 2

Freedom has Many Faces

Chapter 2

* * *

It wasn't that humans attracted nothing more than the Na'vis' hatred; it was more that the Omaticaya had understandably remained wary of them. Their delicate bodies gave no indication of the destructive potential they harboured, and it was undeniable that as little as they knew about the Na'vi, the Na'vi knew even less about them. The incursion of humans into Pandora had been a relatively recent development, a matter of a few decades (by Earth standards) of direct contact, maybe a few years more of distant observation: nothing compared to the millennia the Na'vi had s pent alone in the universe. Inevitably, this lack of open contact had bred anxiety and uncertainty between the two species. For humans and Na'vi alike, what facts they had learned about each other had spun off over time into myths, wild superstitions and, as the Omaticaya knew only too well, simple contempt. The questions posed by both sides were only ever half-answered, and with each strange custom outlined, new questions and new fears were inevitably generated.

There was another, equally grave problem. At least from what the remaining humans related of it, Earth seemed irrelevant. For the Na'vi, who embraced life at even its smallest levels and who claimed to have felt the ceaseless and even flow of energy throughout every body and plant, a dead planet held little interest. Moreover, if the humans had already come to mine Pandora for a precious mineral, it was likely they had other developments in mind for the moon as regards the continuation of their species: potentially anything from taking other resources to the attempted terraforming and total colonisation of some areas. Considerations like this brought Matuei face to face with something she had always sought to deny. Maybe Suhaar was right, if not in what he did to her, then at least in what he had believed.

'So what were you talking to him about?'

Matuei noticed that Nikal was trying hard to sound curious in an off-hand way, rather than interrogative. It was their weekly day of rest, and like most of the other workers they were spending it at home base, lolling around in the branches. Matuei had brought her plough up into the tree in order to examine and repair the blunted blades.

'I need to fix this,' she murmured. 'There's no point breaking my back when the tools don't even work properly.'

'It looked pretty involved.'

Matuei glanced up irritably. 'What did?'

'Your conversation with that human yesterday. I just wondered what the two of you were chatting about.'

'Oh, he was just looking at the plants that are growing up around Hometree. Have you noticed the _luxae_ around there? They're really blossoming.'

Nikal rested her chin on her hands and looked idly into space. 'I can't get used to it. Humans still wandering around, I mean. Especially one like him. It puts me on edge.'

'Mmm-hmm,' muttered Matuei, not really paying much attention.

'I was wracking my brains all last night trying to work out who that human was, and then I remembered. He was a dream-walker once. Not like Jake, though. Not even like that woman who established the school, Grace. Always sneaking around, collecting things, always keeping his distance.'

'He was not chosen as Jake was,' said Matuei, twitching a loose blade. 'He had no other choice. It was a mark of respect, staying away from the People.'

'It was disturbing, that's what it was.' Nikal shuddered. 'To see him now, and the others, as they really are: it makes my blood run cold. Just to think that there were these … mindless bodies wandering around out there that look like us. Hollowed-out things controlled from afar by something alien that was studying us, analysing us, making _plans _for us.'

'Ay me, you do have a bit of a taste for the melodramatic, Nikal. Hush.'

'I don't like knowing that something like that is still here. I don't like it one bit.'

Matuei might deny it, she might try to ignore it as she did now, but it was nonetheless true. It was impossible for a true Na'vi to look an avatar in the eyes and not feel at some level that they were looking at something that challenged their whole sense of being. The unease lay in the very accuracy of the replicated tissue, the too-familiar glow and texture of the large golden eyes, the perfect adaptation of the creatures' skin to Pandora's nightly cycles of bioluminescence before they had even set foot on the moon. The Na'vi's essence had somehow been distilled and distorted to accommodate the form of a completely different species. It made them look at their own kind in a new way. These hybrid imitations, at first little more than a mere biological curiosity, shook the foundations of everything they had once believed and experienced when an avatar emerged as the sixth _Toruk Makto_. Some of the clans felt as if their history was no longer their own, and the will of Eywa, though never entirely clear to begin with, seemed nearly impenetrable now. It was little wonder that a number of Omaticaya elders had deserted the clan, unable to accept the new _Olo'eyktan_. What were the Na'vi now, and what would they become? Had the calculated genetic tinkering of scientists from a species and culture they barely knew anything about made them obsolete somehow? At the very least, they seemed to themselves to have become an extension of – even a testament to the consequences of – the interfacing of alien minds and test tube-grown flesh. The avatar programme could create a body that was flawless and perfectly formed, but it was the bodies of the Na'vi themselves that would come to bear the psychological and physical scars of this process.

Matuei bore those scars more obviously than most. Though the scalpel had first been raised many light years away, it had touched down directly on her skin. Years before the sixth _Toruk Makto _arrived, its blade had inscribed across her flesh all the anxieties that the arrival of the avatars had provoked. Amongst the mangled remains of the nerves at the back of her head every horror, taboo and identity crisis suffered by the Na'vi was permanently written in scar tissue. When the new flesh had become so unmistakeably similar to their own that the Na'vi could not ignore or reject it, it was no longer the avatar that dwelled in the place where the eye did not see, but her own body, a body that bore witness to unspoken fears. Yet perhaps, she thought, in a world where ex-avatars in human skin walked among the Na'vi, she was not alone there.

Her eyes filled with fresh determination as she thought about the human she had encountered the day before. She couldn't let Suhaar be right.

* * *

His hoarse whisper whistled through the chatter and squeaks of the birds above them. 'Careful, careful! Try to keep your elbow as still as possible. That a girl.'

Matuei strengthened her grip on her bow string and stretched out the toes of her right foot. As she felt around with the tips for a better foothold, she kept her sightline trained to the neck of the antelope-like creature before her. Among the rain-slicked rocks she found a reasonably flat moss-covered boulder and began to settle her foot down onto it silently. When her feet were firmly set, her pupils dilated, scoping out the clearing one last time, then they narrowed into two intense black points.

The _yerik _reared up onto its hind legs and flailed at the air. Its neck thrashed around wildly, streaming with blood from the wound that sliced into its carotid. A second arrow soon followed, flying through the air as soundlessly as the first and struck it in the eye. It fell to the ground and lay still.

Matuei heard the quiet groan of Suhaar's bow relaxing behind her. She turned, confused: she could have sworn she had fired the second arrow as well as the first. Suhaar returned her gaze apologetically and placed the arrow he had loaded in his bow for the killing shot in her hand.

'I shouldn't have second-guessed you,' he said, sealing her fingers over it. 'You had everything under control there. I have done your skill an injustice.'

Matuei placed the arrow in her quiver, handling it delicately, almost reverently. They crept forward and kneeled beside the body.

'Your spirit will now be with Eywa, brother, but your body will remain for the People. Thank you.' They spoke the words together. Suhaar ran his fingers over the top of the _yerik_'s head.

'That was masterful,' he said. He lifted the head and thumbed down the lid of the undamaged eye.

'If I were any kind of master I'd have taken him down with the first arrow.'

'It happens to the best of us. What matters is that you didn't fumble around, you recovered. You got that second shot in clean and fast. The worst thing you can do is get an animal in the neck and spend so much time panicking that it manages to run away and suffocate itself to death. I should have believed in you. That second shot could have never been mine to make. This is a good kill.'

Matuei smiled proudly. Back in those days, when her queue still hung low about her waist, a single compliment from Suhaar was worth a hundred from the _Tsahik_. Suhaar was one of the most proficient hunters in the clan, and she had hardly been able to believe her own luck when he had agreed to teach her the more advanced tricks of the trade. She, Nikal and four other women had formed a regular hunting group a few months before she first got to know Suhaar, in response to an epidemic that had spread from a neighbouring clan to the Omaticaya. Whilst it claimed a relatively small number of lives, the illness was nonetheless surprisingly debilitating for those who caught it, and there was suddenly much more pressure on the younger clan members to replace the more experienced hunters and take on the majority of the hunting, planting and foraging necessary to keeping the entire clan fed. Working together as a small unit turned out to be an efficient strategy, but Matuei soon became aware that she was falling behind those who had a more natural talent for the hunt, like Nikal. Since Suhaar had frequently expressed his respect for their group, Matuei decided to take a running jump and ask for his help.

'In return for some of that old female intuition? I'd be honoured.'

Suhaar was two years older than her, with a fine build that hardly seemed to fit with the incredible skill he possessed in handling a wide range of weapons. Yet this basic contradiction was the key to his charm. At rest he was quite unassuming, and Matuei had often wondered if this was the reason he was not already mated with a female. The other men who came of age at the same time often strived to turn their bodies into an alluring display of thick musculature, tastefully pronounced with well-placed body paint. Suhaar, meanwhile, was subtler. When he moved, it was as if some mighty unseen force had suddenly animated his narrow limbs. He was so fleet of foot, so fluid in the way that he sprung between branches that he almost seemed to glide through the forest. In his work he was patient and cunning, surveying his surroundings for the most accessible vantage points, hiding places and areas of shelter before he even began to stalk his prey. He was able to creep along the ground without making any noise, even when he finally leapt forward to ambush an animal. Unlike most of the clan, he applied war-paint on his body that would blend in with the smell of the environment, rather than necessarily acting as visual camouflage or cosmetic enhancement.

'Any hunter can avoid being seen if they learn to move properly. That's not the point. How good are you at controlling your sweat glands? An obvious issue, almost always overlooked.'

Suhaar slung the _yerik_ up onto his shoulder in one easy movement. He started to walk back into the cover of the trees. 'So … you've got a good aim, you can take on a _talioang _almost single-handedly, which believe me is rare, and your aerial combat has greatly improved since you first came to me.'

'It's not just a pair of wings, it's a set of teeth!' laughed Matuei, repeating Suhaar's earlier words to her during their sessions where they had practiced hunting from the air.

Suhaar grinned and shrugged. 'You laugh, but you'd be surprised how many people forget that. They get soft, treat the _ikran_ like pets, or worse, take them completely for granted. They forget what passed between them and the creature in those moments before they made the bond. An _ikran_ demands respect and understanding from the rider from the very first time they look into one another's eyes; otherwise, it'd find no need to put on such a fight. They know they have to mark out their boundaries before _Tsahaylu_ is established. Accepting a rider is the ultimate sacrifice. Its future lies completely in the hands of another. You'll know you've broken an _ikran_ in the worst possible way when you feel it forget it was once a proud and independent hunter. If you lose that terrible awe you had when you met it, _Tsahaylu_ becomes profane and toxic to _ikran_. The queue of every creature on this moon carries with it a great responsibility. And only a fool would make _Tsahaylu_ on an impulse.'

He draped the _yerik_'s body over the low branch of a nearby tree and turned to face Matuei.

'You're an excellent pupil. There's nothing more I can teach you.'

'But-'

'But nothing. It was a pleasure and a privilege hunting with you, sister. I only hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.'

'Of course, of course!' Matuei's ears dropped. 'But … it feels like it ended so quickly. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little sad. So much has changed in me over these last few months. It's as if I've come to Pandora entirely anew. Your words have transformed this world for the better.'

Suhaar chuckled nervously. His earlier sternness had slipped away completely. 'I know I'm a little heavy-handed with the lecturing. It's not that I don't mean any of it. I'm just aware I have this tendency to sound a little bitter sometimes.' His eyes flashed up quickly to meet hers. 'But not with you, certainly not with you. Um … how can I explain this? …I … I get a little scared sometimes. As if we were losing our way. I know it's largely down to the sickness. The younger generation aren't bad in themselves, but they're being forced to rush something that cannot be rushed because the older ones are struggling to provide for the clan. Time is always against us at the moment – and I only wish we could _make_ time, as you have done. For me. Thank you.'

He closed his arms around her. Matuei bent into his embrace, pressing her head against his shoulder. His chest softened as she leant against him, and she reached up her own arms to hug him closer. The forest around them seemed to grow quieter, almost as if it were melting away around her. A soft breeze carried a single _Atokirina'_ into the clearing where the _yerik_ had been feeding minutes before. The skirt of feathery white tendrils fluttered as the airborne seed sank to the ground. Matuei's fingers traced the long pale ridge of scar tissue ran down Suhaar's bicep. Wordlessly, Suhaar lowered his head and planted a nervous but tender kiss on the girl's shoulder. A light covering of dew that Matuei had knocked onto her skin whilst edging through the damp foliage transferred to his lips. He straightened up and saw Matuei looking into his face with wide, patient eyes.

'You are a good man, Suhaar,' she murmured. 'Not just a great _taronyu_. There is such compassion within you, love, vulnerability, apprehension. You are a hunter through and through … but it conceals so much else that lies in your heart.'

'Matuei-'

I only wish I could give you the faith and trust that you need. You have reshaped my world. I want to do the same for you. This isn't just about gratitude.' She reached up and brushed a few stray strands of hair from his face. Her hand settled on his brow. 'It's so much more.'

He took her hand and held it gently between his.

'Then your teacher submits himself entirely to your wisdom.'

The dew returned to her lips. She sunk into his kiss.

Back then, her love had felt like a blazing fire in her chest. At that time she never would have guessed that only fifteen years later the heap of ashes would sit cold and dead, weighing her down like a stone in her heart.

* * *

A week after her conversation with Nikal about Norm, Matuei walked out into the forest at dawn with the intention of collecting some materials for repairing her plough. Both her skin and the plants around her were dappled with the final traces of their bioluminescent patterning, producing a faint but ornate tapestry of crowded purples, greens and whites, into which her own body merged seamlessly. Gradually the presence of other Na'vi – night owls either by choice or accident – thinned out, and she found herself absent-mindedly cutting a random path across a maze of thick black creepers. She stopped and listened. It had once been almost impossible to get lost out here. All she needed to do was calmly find a _pa'li_ or a suitable zooplant and 'feel out' her route back home with the aid of her neural queue. Without this appendage, the forest had become a more confusing and threatening space. She no longer moved through it by instinct, but by landmarks: a system which had taken her a long time to get used to once it became necessary. Usually she tried to avoid walking around at night. She soon learned after she lost her queue that the beautiful lights that burst out from every leaf and animal had a tendency to render a route by which she easily travelled out beyond Hometree whilst it was still light virtually unrecognisable when she tried to return.

Likewise, she regretted venturing out now. A distant chatter overhead gave a vague indication of which direction she should head in: the nocturnal birds in question usually flew east at sunrise, in the direction of the Omaticaya's refuge. Yet as she turned to follow their cries, a mangled scream rang out through the air from her left.

Matuei instantly dropped to her hands and toes. She felt the muscles of her scalp tighten and her hair stand on end. She grabbed at her hip, feeling for her stone knife. If the beast was as close and as large as it sounded, it was unlikely that slashing at the air in front of it would deter an attack, and what really amounted to a glorified paring knife would never be enough to take it down. Her only hope was to run away as fast as possible – but running blind might only prove more dangerous. She tensed her calves and waited for the opportune moment to escape unnoticed.

She heard a weak whine and cautiously looked down past the branch on which she was perched. About thirty feet below her, an _ikran_ was lying on the forest floor. One of its broad green wings was stretched out beside it. The other was apparently crumpled underneath its body. Its head rested to one side, the yellow eye darting along her branch and staring into her face. It whined again and tried to lift its spine to allow its other wing to slip out from where it had been trapped by the reptile's bulk, and even in the half-light she could see the muscles strain and bulge under its skin and the legs scrabble feebly to support the torso. After a few seconds it slumped to the ground with a frustrated hiss.

'You're hurt,' Matuei said.

The translucent third lid closed partially over its eyeball, giving it a look that said, 'Really? I hadn't noticed!' Matuei smiled.

'-But then I suppose that's obvious. Will you let me examine you? I promise not to hurt you.'

The _ikran_ stared back at her silently. She picked her way down the lower limbs of the tree and stepped out warily onto the ground. Her ears perked up on either side of her head, rotating slightly to scan the surrounding area for hidden dangers. Neither hearing nor scenting any, she carefully approached the _ikran_.

Now that she was level with it, she could see the body of the rider slumped a few feet away. Their queues were still connected, but there was a hint of either a struggle to disconnect or a solid blow to the point at which the two cords joined. The fleshy covering of the pink nerves had started to strip away, and the stringy tendrils underneath were torn and weeping. Edging round the _ikran_ so as not to disturb it in this fragile state, Matuei knelt down beside the connected Na'vi and pressed her fingers to his neck. His skin was smeared with rings of blazing red war-paint, revealing that he was a member of the Eastern Sea Clan. She pressed her other hand flat on his chest, but couldn't find a pulse. Even though it could no longer feel the life-force of the rider, the _ikran_ was clearly terrified at finding itself still bound to his corpse. The _ikran_ looked to be young and quite small considering it had come from one of the mountain rookeries, and its relative inexperience had made it particularly anxious. At the very least Matuei had to break the link. It would be easier to hack off the tip of the Na'vi's queue and let the dead remains of his nerves drop off the _ikran_'s queue naturally, but she decided instead to try to help the _ikran_ relax into releasing its own grip. She looked around for anything – food, a distraction – that could help her settle it down. She found nothing. The forest was abnormally silent and still here, perhaps already acknowledging it as a place of death that would soon consume the _ikran _as well as its rider.

She laid her fingers on the end of the _ikran_'s queue and began to caress the translucent grey flesh. To her relief, she saw that the desperate grip the reptile's nerves exerted on those of the dead Na'vi was loosening up with her rhythmic motions. The pink tendrils tentatively coiled back towards her hand, seeking reassurance and the touch of another living thing. Yet when she reached out and touched the tips of the cluster, the nerves recoiled into themselves like the eyes of a snail. A low moan of discomfort escaped the _ikran_'s mouth. As the skin sealed over the bud of nerves, Matuei crawled backwards and brushed the warm bead of a single tear from her cheek.

The _ikran_ curled its neck around to look at the fallen rider beside it. It sniffed at his queue, then nudged his body with its snout. After a few moments it looked back towards Matuei, then rested its head back down on the ground.

'I'm so sorry, brother. You-'

Suddenly, a twig snapped behind her and she swung around. The _ikran_ reared its head up and hissed. Some of its strength seemed to have returned on being released from its bond, and it thumped the ground with the claws of its open wing, trying to drag itself towards the unseen threat.

'Who's there?' Matuei growled. Her eyes roved over the foliage. 'Answer me!'

'Oh crap…' A familiar figure edged out of the forest, hands raised on either side of his head. He caught sight of the wounded _ikran _and virtually tripped over his own feet trying to back away. It growled and snapped at the air. Matuei stroked its neck.

'Be calm, brother. You are not in any danger.'

The _ikran _withdrew reluctantly; she relaxed.

'Norm, yes? What are you doing out here?'

'There's a problem with our waterworks. The ones leading to the colony station, I mean,' said Norm, still staring at the _ikran_. 'I think maybe a pipe got knocked loose or something. We draw the water from a spring around here … somewhere … I … I think I'm a bit lost.' He looked at Matuei. 'I should probably go back and try again when it's lighter. Sorry I startled you.'

'Wait. Could you help me with something? I don't think I can manage it alone.'

'I don't think it'd go down too well if I got any closer to that thing,' said Norm, already turning back into the forest. 'You should probably leave it alone too. This place isn't safe for anyone.'

'He's hurt, Norm. I think his leg is broken, maybe his wing too. I know he doesn't look like it, but he's very weak.'

'But you can't-'

'He can put on a show, yes, but he's only straining himself further. He cannot fight in this condition. We need to help him.' Matuei stepped forward and grasped Norm's shoulder lightly. 'The rider who was flying with him is dead, but he can still survive. If he's left here, _palulukan_, thanator will get him, and it'll be for no good reason. No good reason at all.'

'Matuei, it's no good. Leave him be.'

'Five minutes could make all the difference.'

Norm shook off her hand. 'Matuei, trust me, this kind of thing has been really well-documented in the research that we've been doing through the avatar programme. In all the instances that researchers have tracked the lives of banshees after their Na'vi partner dies, it's the same sad story. It gets rejected when it tries to go back to its original rookery, it goes looking for a new home but it can't hunt by itself any more so it gets too weak to fly, and in the space of a month it dies. This happens every single time.'

'No…'

'I know it's sad. It's absolutely heart-breaking, but it's the best thing you can do for it. It's like releasing a pet dog into a pack of wolves. It's better this way. Look, I'm sorry, but when we're talking about something there's almost a hundred papers on by respected scho-'

'I don't care!' shouted Matuei. 'You know nothing! You pretend that you know the truth, but you're completely ignorant! How can you know anything – none of the People even cared that you walked among us on Pandora! How can you know anything of a world that rejects your kind! He's not some pet - he has every chance of living! He deserves a second opportunity! Everything deserves a second opportunity! You are nothing to him! You and your "researchers" are soulless parasites, crawling in the dirt – and you dare to wonder why this world ignores you!'

She crumpled to the ground and flicked the tears away from her eyes. She was furious at herself for crying – for letting some clueless human get to her so easily. Behind her, the _ikran _gave a quiet trilling coo, evidently unsettled by the volume of her outburst. When she looked up, she was surprised to see Norm still standing in front of her, but she did not see the guilt on his face, only his balled-up fists, held rigid at his sides. She gasped and stumbled backwards with a loud screech of pain.

Norm stared. Matuei's sudden and incomprehensible shift from anger to wild fear appeared entirely unmotivated and spontaneous. She had leapt away from him as if stuck by lightning. He almost dreaded looking back over his shoulder, expecting to see a _palulukan_ lurking behind him, thick black quills flared up around its head and its lips drawn back in the ghastly grimace of a flehmen response as it drank in his scent through its mouth … but there was nothing there.

'Matuei, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so harsh with you back there. I just thought you-'

'Forget it.' She was already back on her feet, brushing down her knees. She turned back to the _ikran_, who had watched this exchange with silent bemusement. Matuei stroked its head.

'Eywa is merciful. She would not let him suffer like this if she didn't mean him to go on. Please, Norm. I didn't mean to lose my temper like that. Almost everyday the burial teams return with nothing but bad news and haunted eyes. I just wanted to make a difference – but I can't do this alone. It's a two-man job and I can't abandon him now to look for someone else. He was calling to me with the last of his strength.'

Norm did not reply.

'The last time I spoke to you, you showed such love and fascination for the forest. I cannot believe the same man would give up on its creatures so easily. Please.'

Norm sighed. He dropped his rucksack off his back onto the ground and re-adjusted his breathing apparatus, shaking his head.

'This is sad, this is just sad.' He got to his feet. 'You'll have to cover its eyes first. I don't care how cuddly and fluffy you say this thing is; if we don't cover its eyes it won't even tolerate being examined, especially by the likes of me.'

He kneeled down again and eased the oxygen supply off his back before removing his khaki jacket. 'Here, we can use this.'

'It's worth a try, but be careful. Approach it slowly.'

'Right. Watch it closely. You may have bones like diamond, but one bite from this guy and I'd be saying goodbye to everything from my waist down. Okay, let's give this a shot.'

Norm held the jacket out in a flat sheet. Matuei trailed her hand down to the bony crest on the _ikran_'s lower jaw and held it gently. She kept talking to the creature in a low whisper to ensure its attention was fixed on her, and tried not to look up to see how Norm was progressing.

Suddenly he flung the jacket over the _ikran_'s eyes and pulled it down over both sides of the head. It squealed and tried to pull away from him, but Matuei tightened her grip on its chin and held it firm against her shin. If she relied too much on the human holding the head towards his body, it could shatter the bones of his legs or his glass mask in an instant. She tugged the jacket down over its jaws. Norm swung a hand free and grabbed at a rolled length of thick metal cable on the side of his bag.

'Tie this around his head!' he shouted. 'It'll hold the cover on. Quickly!'

With his help Matuei wound the cord about the _ikran_'s jaws and pulled it into a knot.

'On the count of three, we'll release it together,' panted Norm. Matuei nodded. 'One … two … _three_!'

They leapt back from the _ikran_. It lifted its blanketed head, shook it from side to side in its confusion, then gradually laid it back down on the earth again.

'It worked,' murmured Matuei.

'Great. Now we have to set the leg and get it off that right wing. Fortunately it's not a compound fracture, so he doesn't seem to have lost any blood. See how its all wound up and bent funny? We have to pull it back into place before we tie it to a splint.' His manner was business-like and methodical, but he knew that he was acting this way primarily to suppress the terror he felt at having actually touched the gigantic beast. He glanced around. 'Can you find a piece of wood, about this long?' He measured out an invisible length between his forefingers. 'It has to be solid, but reasonably straight, and it'll need to be as dry and as free of any mould and fungus and bugs as possible.'

'I'll do my best,' said Matuei.

She ran her hand through the undergrowth, searching for fallen branches. She heard fabric being torn behind her and glanced back to see Norm ripping his shirt into a row of strips long enough to tie the splint around the _ikran_'s leg. Eventually Matuei came across a slab of thick bark scraped from one of the trees. She carried it back and knelt beside the twisted leg. Cautiously she reached out and placed her hand on the narrow hip joint. Norm reached back into his bag and took out a small bottle of whisky. He poured all but the last mouthful of the liquid that was left inside onto his hand and rubbed the two together vigorously.

'Oh,' said Matuei. 'Was that the last of your water? Shall I get some more?'

Norm grinned. 'No, no, it's fine. It's not water. And trust me, this army-issue stuff tastes so bad, the only thing it's any good for is sterilising stuff.'

He laid his hands down slowly on the _ikran_'s leg, and felt around for the break. The _ikran_ gave a loud hiss and flung its wing weakly in his direction. He ducked and loosened his grip.

'Bingo. Okay, I need you to hold the hip and the foot as steady as you can. I'm going to try bending this loosely back into shape with the splint. We'll have to work really fast when it comes to tying it all together. Do you think you can calm him down somehow?'

'I'll do my best. He's very scared, but I think he knows we're trying to help him.'

'Well, that's good to know. At least now I can rest assured that if he kills me it won't be on purpose.'

Matuei ignored him and began to hum a gentle, lilting tune and slipped her hand down to the clawed foot. She nodded to Norm, who held the bark against the leg. Matuei looked over at the freed wing, preparing to dive forward and push Norm aside if it came down again to strike at them.

'Here goes,' whispered Norm.

The force with which he pushed the fractured leg caught Matuei by surprise. The _ikran_ screamed and began to thrash about, scraping at the two of them with its other leg. It was trying to bend and swing its wing into a hard bludgeon aimed directly at Norm's head, but the human had already ducked safely out of range, and was wrapping the strips of his shirt around the splinted leg. Matuei's humming opened up into louder, more insistent singing as she knotted the strips into place. The struggle was over in less than a minute.

'Stand back,' Matuei ordered. 'I'll try to lift his body off the other wing.'

With one strong push she held the _ikran_'s mass up high enough for the crumpled wing to slip out. It was filthy and trembling, with two large round tears in the somewhat anaemic-looking membrane that had started to show signs of infection, but it appeared unbroken. Resuming her song, Matuei walked round to the wing and began massaging it with long, firm movements in an attempt to get the blood flowing through it again. Norm stood a little way off with his hands on his hips, examining the wounds.

'I might be able to cut away some of that bad tissue. The alcohol should help disinfect it for a while.'

Matuei passed her knife to him, and he set to work, applying the remainder of the whisky to the knife's tip and the edges of each tear. The _ikran_ winced a little at the sting, but remained reasonably still, soothed by Matuei's massage and singing. After roughly ten minutes, the wing began to flex by itself. Norm cleaned the edge of the knife on his vest top and handed it back to Matuei. He breathed a sigh of relief. Matuei saw that there were tears running down his face.

'Thank you so much. I didn't realise you'd be so good at this,' she said, calmly trying to making amends for shouting at him earlier. 'Are you trained?'

'Well, if you go out on the field, you have to be. It's just basic medical training, nothing fancy.' Norm dropped his head and breathed out heavily. His mask frosted up briefly. 'I can't believe I just did that. Christ, I should be dead by now.'

'Eywa has protected you. She knows you have a good heart, Norm.'

Eywa, thought Norm, or just plain dumb luck? Na'vi anthropologist or not, he knew which of those two he would have considered more likely. His heart was thundering in his chest and his whole body seemed to grow warm with the thrill of survival. His head felt lighter than air: he didn't know if he was about to pass out or burst into a fit of hysteria.

Presently, he became aware of Matuei gently shepherding him away from the _ikran_. It was standing now, balanced on the knuckle of each wing and its good leg. Matuei had removed the jacket from its head. It hobbled towards them and lowered its nose to Norm's chest, snorting in the smell of his vest. He gulped. _Yep, definitely going to faint._ He hardly registered that the _ikran_ was making a quiet purring sound and that the sniffing had been replaced with a few insistent but feather-light rubs of its snout against his chest.

'Find yourself a new home, brother,' said Matuei. 'You are still strong by yourself. Do not be afraid. I know there are others like you out there. This I promise.'

The _ikran_ turned and began hauling itself up towards the canopy. The sunlight was streaming down now, illuminating the edges of its wings and blowing precious heat into the fiercely pumping blood vessels that were visible in each membrane. The _ikran_'s progress was gradual but steady, and when it reached the top, they heard the bellow of the wind hooked under its wings. A triumphal shriek rang out across the forest.

Norm's mouth fell open. '_My god _… it's already fit to _fly_ again?'

Matuei leapt up with a shout of joy and clapped her hands together above her head.

'Fly high, brother, fly high!'

'It's okay,' panted Norm in total disbelief. 'The banshee's okay. It's … oh god, I had my hands all over that thing and I'm still in one piece. I have to sit down.'

He flopped to the ground and laughed to himself. His hands were trembling uncontrollably. The tears were streaming down his cheeks now. He wrapped his arms around his stomach and shook himself all over. Matuei's hand dropped to his shoulder and rubbed it reassuringly.

'Are you alright, Norm? You're shaking…'

'Nothing sixty gallons of that god-awful whisky wouldn't cure.'

* * *

The pale flesh of the _teylu_ grubs crackled and spat from where they hung gouged on a skewer over the fire. Matuei slipped her arm from around Suhaar's waist and got to her feet.

'I think they're done,' she said, slipping the wooden stick from the two x-shaped supports on which it was resting. She blew on the hot meat and sat down beside her mate. Suhaar kissed her cheek and started to reach forward to pluck a grub off the stick.

'Careful!' warned Matuei. 'Don't burn yourself.'

Suhaar paused and opened the palm of his hand towards her. 'Have you seen the calluses on these things lately? A little burn wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. A collection like mine would be the pride of any archer, don't you think?'

Matuei took his hand in hers. She traced its outline and pads tenderly with her thumb. 'Mmm. But how can you feel anything? There must be no difference between bark and my skin to your touch.'

'Well, see, I was worried about that some time ago. You may not know this, but I have held hands with many girls. But none like you.'

'Awww.' Matuei smiled and rested her head against his chest.

'None of them could ever compare to you. Moist, soft, completely free of imperfections – no, no, no. I got just what I was looking for – the finest old wizened tree of the lot!'

'You beast!' squealed Matuei, slapping his chest playfully. 'Okay, that's it!'

Holding the skewer away from him, she jumped to her feet and barked at the morning sky. Suhaar stretched forward from where he was sitting and grabbed at her heels. She skipped away from his hands with a giggle and continued to crack short high-pitched barks off her palate with her tongue.

'What are you doing?' laughed Suhaar, rolling onto his side.

The sound of approaching wing beats thundered through the air as a purple _ikran_ soared into view at Matuei's command. The _ikran_ circled once above them, searching for the best place to land, and then swooped down to the cliff's edge. Matuei made the bond and climbed up on its back. She took a large, exaggerated bite from the roasted grub skewer and smiled broadly. The juices of the meat trickled down her chin.

'If you want a piece, you'll have to catch me first, _taronyu_,' she said. He wrapped her arm around the _ikran_'s neck. 'Fly fast, Bej, a hunter's on our tail!'

'Wait!' Suhaar shouted as the _ikran_ leapt back into the air. He started to summon his own _ikran_, remembered that the fire was still blazing, and raced towards it, kicking the ring of stones placed around it onto the flames in a frantic jig. A large blue _ikran_ landed behind him. He held up his queue.

'After her, Wi'sne! Catch that thief!' He patted the reptile's head. 'But treat her gentle.'

They swung off the cliff, diving forty feet in a matter of seconds. The treetops crashed and swayed below as the _ikran_'s wings sucked up vast swells of air. Suddenly it exploded upwards and raced after Matuei's _ikran_. Suhaar's mate looked round and waved. Suhaar lowered his head and bore his teeth in a wide grin.

'Mmm-mmm! Suhaar, this is delicious, you really should have some!' Matuei chewed the second grub off her skewer and threw its tail to Bej, who gulped it up enthusiastically. She leant closer to the _ikran_'s head and whispered, 'Girl, if you lose him I will give you half of what's left.'

Bej screeched and spun into a tight turn, sling-shotting around a cliff face. She beat her wings violently and dipped one towards the ground. She rolled steadily until her body has tilted ninety degrees, and Matuei had just enough time to realise what her mount was aiming for: a narrow rupture between two parallel pillars of rock, about a quarter of a mile in depth. As they drew closer and closer, it seemed to slim down into an ever tighter crack, the walls on either side becoming increasingly visible till they gave the illusion that the space was closing up before Matuei's eyes. She clung as closely to Bej's neck as she could. Apparently sensing her sudden uncertainty and fear, Bej gave a long, purring trill and dived into the crevice.

When Matuei opened her eyes again, she was shocked to find that they had landed securely on a horizontal surface, banked on either side by a curving rock face, each slumping towards the other like the two planes of a roof. She clasped to the bony ridges of Bej's shoulder-blades and peered down. Bej was contentedly chewing on the skewer of _teylu_ grubs where it had fallen to the ground.

'Where are we?' Matuei asked. She hopped down off Bej's back and released her queue.

The space around them was not so much a cavern as a long corridor with a thin stream running down its middle. She spotted a bush some twenty feet away at the opening where daylight strained into the passage and ran towards it. The roof of the gap opened up before her, and she realised that Bej had arced straight down into a hollowed-out tunnel at the foot of the two rock pillars that was overgrown and thus virtually invisible from the outside. She looked back towards the _ikran _still munching away contentedly on the last of her snack.

'Not just a pretty face, I see. I didn't realise you were such an adventurous type, Bej.'

'Matuei! Where are you?'

She jumped at the call. She'd momentarily forgotten that Suhaar was still pursuing her. His _ikran_ was hovering in front of the pillars and angling its head this way and that, trying to peer into the gap.

'I'm down here!'

Suhaar leaned over the side of the _ikran_ and squinted at the foot of the crevice. 'How did you get down there?'

Matuei laughed and looked back at Bej. 'I don't really know! I'll meet you up there.'

The response was an ear-splitting scream. She looked up just in time to see Wis'ne reel towards the cover of the canopy, a _toruk _right on his tail. It had managed to catch the hovering _ikran_ unaware and had swooped down soundlessly from its perch on the rock pillar to her left. Wis'ne jetted around the treetops, searching frantically for an opening. The larger predator powered after him till its body eclipsed Suhaar's mount, blocking him from sight.

'Suhaar!' screamed Matuei. She leapt out into the forest and ran as fast as her legs would carry her towards the spot where she had last seen the two reptiles. She was barely halfway there when she heard another screech. Her blood ran cold: it was the cry of an _ikran_. A bellowing roar followed, and she saw the _toruk_ lurch off back to its perch. Its claws were empty.

'Damn it, marine, I told you to hold your fire!'

'Doctor, those two monsters were about to attack us. We all saw it coming.'

'Oh yeah? Care to explain why you fired on the wrong one!'

A strange party rushed out of the surrounding cover. One appeared to be a Na'vi in a style of dress Matuei had never seen before. A beige garment completely covered her torso, combined with a pair of knee-length black shorts. It was the other two creatures, however, that were the strangest members of this trio. They were bipeds, slightly less than half the size of an adult Na'vi, with pale skin broken only by a thin covering of dark hairs on their exposed forearms. Both wore clothing crudely decorated with irregular shapes and murky colours that Matuei assumed were intended to break up their outlines and help them blend in with the forest. They carried curious long weapons in their hands, and their heads were entirely encased in transparent shells that seemed roughly analogous to the visors _ikran_ riders wore to protect their eyes from the rushing winds and any debris and insects flying around in it.

Matuei instinctively dropped to her hands and lashed her tail from side to side in a defensive manner. The smaller creatures looked down at her quizzically, as if they didn't really understand the gesture. Her lips skinned back over her teeth to reveal her fangs, and her tongue jetted out between her jaws. It flicked against the underside of her top lip in an aggressive upward curl, then slipped back into her mouth.

One of the figures began to back away, muttering in a strange language: 'Uhh, Dr. Augustine, I thought you said these things probably wouldn't eat people…'

'Well, I _speculated_ as much. But right now I wouldn't mind if you were the one to disprove my theory,' the strange Na'vi responded in the same language. 'Pipe down, both of you. It's a standard display – she's trying to avoid a confrontation, not start one.'

The clothed Na'vi took a slow step backwards and kept her head and tail low as she tried to avoid looking directly into Matuei's eyes. When she next spoke, it was in fluent Na'vi.

'I'm sorry that I've crossed into your territory. I mean you no harm. I am an envoi from another clan, a doctor, a teacher. My name is Grace. I came so that I might seek a consultation with your _Tsahik_. It is a matter of some importance-'

All of a sudden Suhaar marched into view, a hand cupped over one eye and his face wracked with pain. He jerked his bow towards the newcomer angrily.

'Are you insane? What do you think you are doing! Firing arrows like a maniac - we could have died!'

'We were trying to hit the _toruk_, not you,' said Grace. She reverted back to her own language. 'Christ, I told them a million times, no trigger-happy dumb-shit human escort! If it weren't for that damn research grant I swear I'd have turned Selfridge's fat head into a hood ornament by now. Shoulda' known they were handing me a poisoned chalice the moment they-'

Suhaar swiped an arrow from his quiver and lunged forward. He kicked away one of the smaller animals with a low blow to the stomach and held the tip against the newcomer's neck. She lifted her palms in surrender, but her face remained calm.

'I'm unarmed. Please-'

'You are not one of the People!' Suhaar barked. 'This is not the language of the People. Your eyes lie too close together. And you smell strange – not even of the forest.' His eyes passed to her raised hands. At the sight of the extra finger on each, he snarled. 'What are you? What kind of creature steals the skin of a Na'vi and wears it for its own! Speak, impostor!'

'I mean you no harm.' She spoke slowly and firmly. 'I come from another clan, with good intentions. I will send these two away and submit to your custody without any weapons. If I could just talk to your leaders, you'll see I am no threat to the Omaticaya.'

Matuei stepped forward and grasped the arrow's shaft, pushing it gently back towards Suhaar.

'What are you doing-?'

'She's telling the truth.'

'How do you know? Don't you find it at all suspicious that someone … something like her just crops up and requests, even _expects_ an audience with the _Olo'eyktan_?' Suhaar paused and breathed out heavily. 'Matuei, I remember our vows. I remember how you swore to teach me to trust in the world and see it through an open heart. Nothing is more important to me than honouring your wishes, but I cannot ignore my instincts!'

'Even if she's lying, we have no other choice. We have no right to judge or execute these strangers. We have to bring them to Eytukan and Mo'at. Only they will know what to do.' Suhaar's strong hold on the arrow yielded, and she pressed its head down towards the ground. 'Eywa gave us the responsibility of being their first point of contact for a reason. We must deliver them. This is her will.'

Suhaar nodded slowly and uncertainly. He retreated.

'Tell your companions to hand their weapons to us,' Matuei said to Grace. 'We will take all three of you to meet with our clan leaders. They will decide how best to deal with you and your … "matter of some importance".'

'It's too far to walk,' said Suhaar. 'We'll have to fly back to Hometree. I'm afraid Wi'sne is still in shock. You'll have to carry them on Bej.'

'Somehow I get the impression that has more to do with me than Wi'sne.'

Suhaar grunted. 'We'll talk about this later. Be sure to make sure I can keep you in sight when you're up in the air. I want to make sure these intruders don't get any ideas.'

Grace held the two guns out to him with their butts turned to the ground as he turned back into the forest. He snatched them from her and stalked away.

'Come. It's okay, we won't hurt you,' said Matuei. She started back towards Bej's concealed resting place.

Grace nodded to the two human soldiers and jogged forward a little to keep up pace with Matuei.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cause any trouble between you and your mate.'

Matuei sighed. 'He's naturally suspicious. It's nothing new, he's been that way for a long time.'

She looked over at Grace. She _did _look strange – a bit 'off', somehow. Her nose was much narrower and her face slightly longer than an ordinary Na'vi's. Her eyes, though, conveyed a sense of honesty, a benign expression which suggested a curious mixture of humbleness and excited fascination.

'I am Matuei. I'm sorry, I didn't really get your name.'

'It's Grace.' The strange Na'vi's ears perked up. 'I may have been hearing things wrong, but did you say something about flying just then?'

'Yes. You _have _flown before, yes?'

Grace looked up at the birds wheeling in the sky. 'Not like this.'

'But surely you must be of age! What clan are you from? Is it based very far away from these parts?'

'Further than you know, Matuei. Much, much further.'

* * *

Author's note: First off, thanks very much to those people who commented/faved/added a story alert after reading the last chapter – all greatly appreciated!

Secondly, I rushed this chapter out in a couple of slow weekday evenings and I'm sure it shows, especially in some of that ridiculously cheesy dialogue and the parts where I obviously forgot how to write in proper sentences – *bites fist in embarrassment* … _gnah_…

I did originally plan to set aside the flashback-esque scenes in a separate chapter, but I thought that might be a bit too torturous (and, of course, less conducive to some good old-fashioned completely over-stated thematic mirroring!). I hope this non-linear approach works for anyone who's reading. In case I managed to confuse anyone along the way, the first scene is set in the present of the story, the second in the past a good few years before the time period covered in the film, the third in the present again, and obviously the fourth takes place in the past. Easy peasy, pudding and pie.

Y'know, as much as Avatar itself feels like a really derivative film 90% of the time, I'm starting to appreciate how easy it is to nab elements from other texts. I've already caught myself riffing on Invasion of the Body-Snatchers and Forbidden Planet (granted it's a very obscure reference to one of that film's more amusing scenes featuring Robby the Robot that I just couldn't resist) in this chapter alone. It has crossed my mind that I'm more in love with wonderful, wonderful 1950s sci-fi/horror films than is really healthy.


	3. Chapter 3

Freedom has Many Faces

Chapter 3

* * *

The sun was high up in the sky by the time Norm arrived back at Hell's Gate. In the trees overhead a small cluster of prolemuris swung between branches with their long angular arms and chattered excitedly to one another. One reached out with a fruit in its hand to a member of its group huddled on a thicker limb. From under the broad skin flaps of the second animal's upper arms, a tiny blue and green face peeked out and looked anxiously but eagerly at the offering.

Norm walked round to a side-entrance and swiped his key-card through the slot on the external gate. His fingers moved automatically over the keypad below, entering the pass-code. The gate slung open with a loud metallic buzz, allowing him access beyond the electrical fence that had been put up when the colony centre was first built in order to deter the local wildlife. The side-entrance to the building itself consisted of a sequence of sealed chambers designed to function as an airlock and cleanse staff coming in from the outside of any potential pathogenic matter that might have collected on their clothing and skin.

Norm moved systematically through the first few cells until he was permitted to remove his exopack. As he worked it off his head he realised as he always did at this point how stale the air had become behind the mask. The newly filtered air that circulated around the base ran over his face and down his throat like a jet of cool water. He pulled off his jacket and vest and tossed them through a laundry chute in the side of the fourth chamber. He was about to remove his boots when a low purring voice cut in over the tannoy.

'Where'd your shirt go, tiger?'

It was Helen Ranger, one of the other humans involved in the avatar programme who had been permitted to stay on Pandora. She and one of the other researchers whose avatar body was also still in tact had gone on an excursion overnight; Norm assumed that they must have returned a few hours before him.

'My shirt? I lost it,' he replied.

'I can see that,' said Helen. 'What were you doing out there?'

Norm unlaced his boots and kicked them off. 'Maintenance. We lost water for a few hours whilst you were out. Should be back now, though. It was a hole in one of the pipes.' He peeled the damp socks from his feet. 'Any idea where Max is?'

'Mess hall, I think.' Helen's voice softened. 'He's not talking much today. He seems a bit low. I don't know what's wrong exactly, though.'

They both knew it was the isolation getting to him, like it got to all of them. They didn't tend to discuss it openly with one another, but everyone who manned the base felt lonely from time to time. Hell's Gate maintained more or less the same level of contact with other colonies both on- and off-Earth – other remnants of humanity – as it had when it was fully staffed. Live video and audio feed, though, were still impossible. Norm remembered what a shock it had been at first to travel from a planet where cross-global communications appeared instantaneous to a situation where recorded messages could sometimes take several weeks to arrive at the other end. It didn't help that conditions were as volatile on Earth as they were on Pandora. At the start of one month you could be receiving a message from a sibling or parent where they'd be reassuring you through a fixed smile that they were doing fine and everything was reasonably calm on Earth and that they'd be in touch again soon. By month's end, the next you might hear of them was just one more copy-and-paste reproduction of the same old official notice informing you that they had passed away. Just the name changed, with no mention of the exact circumstances. It could be one of the increasingly frequent natural disasters that rocked the planet, maybe a water-borne illness they had suddenly contracted within a few weeks for which the necessary medical treatment was temporarily unavailable, perhaps one of the raids the Pandora colony sometimes heard about: the random desperate pillaging of someone else's rations that ended too regularly in murder. The worst part was waiting. You could go on for years expecting that notice at any time, whilst the two of you carried on chatting and updating one another, always saying 'hope to hear from you again soon, take care' with quietly intense conviction, in case it was the last time.

Norm raised the shower head slightly on its metal frame. 'Uh, Helen, any chance you could turn off the surveillance cam in here for a bit?'

'And here I was thinking I'd get away with it this time,' Helen laughed. 'Kay, Norm. See you up top.'

The voice cut off. Norm removed the last of his clothing and turned the shower on. The sudden spray felt gloriously warm and soothing against his skin. He breathed in the rising vapour, clearing his lungs fully of the air that had been circulating around his exo-pack for the previous few hours. Muddy water swirled down into the large drain embedded at the centre of the floor. As he relaxed the thought washed over him: I spent my night in banshee ER, and lived to tell the tale. No longer terrified, he grinned and wondered how Max would respond to this news.

And then he thought back to Matuei. When she had insisted that he helped her heal the banshee's wounds, his first thought had been that she was simply naïve. Too old to be naïve, but naïve nonetheless. Against his better nature, his mind had fallen back into the divisive condescension of the scholar. He had suspected that all her idea of 'flying again' or 'going to a better place' were part-euphemism, part-honest belief, part-ignorance. Inferring ignorance on others was still a hard tendency to fight off, even though he had studied the Na'vi and their customs for years. Spend a long enough time confined in a small space like Hell's Gate, and you felt that attitude closing in from almost every side, easy to spot when it came across as open aggression, but just as unsettling when it assumed a benign appearance. It was difficult, too, to reach a compromise between educating someone about a different culture and objectifying it, imposing rules and patterns on it that reduced it to something basic and regular, something that was only learned and not in fact lived. He had felt the same way when working with Jake to help induct him into the Omaticaya. It didn't matter how intelligent you were; the more alien another species and culture was, the more tempting it could be to treat it like Latin. It's a dead language, you don't _speak_ it as such, the typeface used in these books doesn't show how the letters were _really_ written and the photographs are poor quality. In the early days, learning about the Na'vi on Earth, Norm had sometimes felt a little guilty about his enthusiasm, as he often wondered whether this passion came from the enjoyment academics can feel when admiring an amusingly quaint old curiosity or from a genuine love for something that was breathing and coherent and developing so quickly that when he actually got to Pandora he would barely recognise it.

To his dismay, his regard for Na'vi culture became even more impure as he clocked in more and more simulation hours with his avatar body. Those experiences became something precious that was his alone. He felt as if he had some private, superior understanding of what it felt to be in a Na'vi body, but however much he stood staring into the mirror, catching the occasional glimpse of a familiar face imprinted in human flesh, going years and years without actually coming face-to-face with a true Na'vi had quietly taken its toll on his powers of judgment.

He turned off the shower and reached for a towel. All that life he had never fully been able to appreciate seemed to flow from Matuei's body like a stream of blood. The stump of her queue had reminded him of how far her experiences must lie beyond his knowledge. The sight of it had both terrified and humbled him, and he did not pity her. He just felt extremely sad.

After drying off, he changed into a fresh set of clothes and headed up to the mess hall to see if Max Patel was still there. He found the doctor sitting at a table next to the window, staring out over the jungle and warming his hands around a cup of coffee. When Max saw Norm enter, he looked over and smiled.

'Thanks for fixing the water,' he said. He gestured to a cafetière and an empty mug beside it. 'Sit yourself down. You look like you need this even more than I do.'

Norm thanked him and sat down on the bench opposite. He poured some coffee out, mixed in some milk and raised the cup to Max.

'Best coffee in the world,' he said. He drained half the mug in one go, not caring that the water stung the tip of his tongue.

'Glad you think so. It took my whole PhD to discover the perfect method. Just as well, really: all I ever seem to do these days is press a couple of buttons and drink coffee.' Max lowered his cup. 'I trust you didn't face too many problems sorting out the water supply?'

'Hole in a pipe. It was getting rusty anyway so I changed it for a spare.' Norm leaned forward. 'Guess what.'

'Agh, I've already done too much guesswork this morning just trying to work out the fastest way I can get a message to my niece. It's her birthday next month. Seventeen years old. I can't believe it – last time I saw her she had pigtails! She was barely waist-high to me.' Max sighed. 'But this is the way things are, I suppose. What did you have to tell me?'

'I helped a banshee to fly again,' said Norm with a wide grin across his face.

'You what?'

'I know! Christ, it sounds insane just saying that.'

In Max's face Norm saw the same succession of conflicting emotions he had felt when he agreed to help Matuei.

'You could have been killed, what in hell did you think you were- what, single-handedly?'

'No, of course not!' Norm laughed. 'I helped a Na'vi fix him up.'

'Forget the banshee, the Na'vi could have killed you!' exclaimed Max. He was now on his feet, reaching over the table with his hands laid down flat on either side of Norm's mug. 'How are you still alive?'

'A little luck, a little bit of negotiation.'

Not to mention a fresh perspective on things.

* * *

After speaking with Max and dropping in to say hello to Helen properly, Norm climbed into his bunk. He hadn't slept properly in days. It was becoming a real habit now. With the loss of senior staff on the avatar programme like Grace, work and research had become less structured and regulated, and he hated hanging around in Hell's Gate all day. The whole base felt haunted by the people who had once worked there. Every time he turned round, he glimpsed lines of marines and officers rushing down the corridor from the corner of his eye, none of whom were there any more. The silence was boring, but worse than that, it was stifling. Like most human beings, he only noticed the warm reassurance of knowing that you were only ever several feet from another person, whether a friend or not, when he had lost it altogether.

Sighing, he wrapped the sheets around him. He was asleep almost instantly.

* * *

The old sensations returned, vague but somehow too bright. He shielded his eyes with long blue fingers. He went through the familiar motions, first laying his palms on his face and slowly splaying the fingers apart to allow his sensitive golden eyes to become accustomed to the strong daylight. The black pupils constricted and began to take in his surroundings as he flexed and tightened each muscle in his long body. He was lying on the forest floor, gazing up into the canopy. Far off, an annoying barrage of popping and cracking noises shuddered through the air. His ears lowered, the tips brushing the light carpet of leaves beneath him as they arced downwards.

Suddenly he stiffened. He reached down to his chest. A warm viscous wetness soaked his fingertips. He whisked them away instantly as if he had just touched a hot pipe. Their dark redness laced down towards and around his knuckles. The spot on his chest that he had touched began to sting, then burned until it became agonising.

His mind exploded into action. A bullet wound. He tried to raise himself up onto his elbows but the pain brought him back down. He thumped the ground hard with his fists in an attempt to take his mind off it just long enough that he could move and look around to check whether his assailant was gone. Internal organs he had barely been consciously aware of before began to make their presence known just as they were starting to fail, each boiling with pain as if they were drilling into the original hole the bullet had made, widening it to fill his entire body. It felt like they were turning against him. In a final ditch, he bit down hard on his bottom lip and clenched his fists even more, then thrust himself up and forward with a loud grunt.

He flopped down to the ground again, face-first. The warmth of his blood welled under him. In desperation he looked up: lying inches from his nose was a rifle, apparently dropped by a human soldier. He reached forward to drag it towards him with trembling hands. The butt and trigger were too small for him to use, but he still clung to that end of the gun uselessly.

It was then that he noticed the cloying acrid stink that rose into the air around him. He looked down and saw that fluid was now spilling out from his chest in a growing black puddle. Dazed from haemorrhaging, he pressed two fingers into the pool and rubbed at them with his thumb. There wasn't a trace of red left in the liquid; it didn't even smell like blood anymore. Not human blood, not Na'vi blood, not even like a mixture of the two. Instinctively he gripped the rifle more firmly. The black pool had reached the outstretched hand now. He could hardly believe that he was still conscious given the sheer quantity of it. The wetness wrapped around his fingers. It was even thicker than before. When he looked closely at it, whirls of pink and blue swam around before his eyes, only to disappear when he looked away. The liquid covered his hand now. He flexed the fingers, and the space around them that was once too small for him to grasp properly was now pliant to his grip. He raised his gun arm up. He tried to toss the rifle away.

The flesh was fused to the plastic and metal.

_Oh god I have to go there's a way out of this I have to leave but I don't know how how did I do it before god concentrate concentrate somewhere there's a button but I can't get it to that it's no good there's some other way I know there is come on you know this just try to remember-_

From behind him there was a fierce growl. Clawing around with the aid of the rifle, which more and more felt like an extension of his index finger till the very end of the barrel seemed to curl into a jointed digit, he spotted an animal with leathery grey skin. It was crouched low to the ground, the flesh pulled back from a long set of crocodile-like jaws. When its flashing yellow eyes met his, the lips wrapped back even further until the entire face of the creature seemed to be turning itself inside out to reveal one enormous glistening mouth.

He tried to retreat. The moment he moved the animal leapt into the air, its growl opening up into a bellowing cry. It had initially looked more like something that would waddle or slither along the ground like a lizard, but it moved like a dog, and he saw now that the legs were actually quite long. All six were flung forward, targeting his stomach. He couldn't move fast enough. In the next second it had seized the flesh of his narrow waist in its teeth and was worrying at it madly, rolling its head this way and that with incredible force. As it flipped him over onto his back with a hard push, black fluid sprayed onto its face. The animal screamed and jumped back. It thrashed its head from side to side even more furiously than when it had attacked him and scraped at its spattered red gums with a front foot. The scrabbling of its claws against its face slowed until each talon seemed to drag through the flesh. Still horribly conscious and aware of what was going on, he could see that the dark blood that poured from his chest had bored through the creature's gums like strong acid and that the animal's attempt to clear its face of the substance had only succeeded in making each wound larger.

It gave up and burst forward with fresh rage. Its teeth fastened onto his waist again and pressed into him harder and harder. As it clamped down on his flesh it didn't seem to care that it was destroying itself at the same time. It just burrowed in further and further, widened its jaws one last time and closed them on his organs with a cold sharp metallic clank.

Norm screwed up his face irritably and turned over onto his other side. The wire rungs of the bunk squeaked below him. His hand clutched at the pillow briefly and his legs kicked out uncomfortably, and then he was still again.

* * *

Author's note: Yeah, so, I wasn't _trying_ to make that dream sequence all _Aliens_-y, but it just turned out that way. This is fanfiction – what're you expecting, originality! I'll raise the rating if necessary, but really that's as graphic as I'm prepared to get here. I was going to make it a bit nastier, but meh, the weird dream logic is there, and that's what matters as far as my intentions for this fic are concerned. Next chapter will be more cheerful and should shed a bit more light on the situation … it's just that writer's block is harder to get rid of when you don't permit yourself a little gratuity!

Thought I'd keep this one short since the last chapter ran quite long. I'll get back to the flashbacks in the next chapter. I whizzed this out in about a day so there's a bit of lumbering fat in here that I'd normally trim away. As before, thank you so much for your story alert adds, faves, reviews. And a special thanks to Vskrainaek for answering my question about sturmbeests in the last chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

Freedom has Many Faces

Chapter 4

* * *

'Sweet mother of god…'

Grace Augustine's lips spread into a wide toothy grin. 'Sure beats the photographs.'

She was standing, in her avatar body, with the two marines she had very reluctantly allowed to accompany her in the heart of Hometree. The meeting place was like a great hall, draped with ornate woven banners that hung from the highest branches and filled with fearsome shadows cast by the skulls of massive animals that were mounted above their heads. Word of their coming had already been sent ahead, and Hometree was filled with rows and rows of Na'vi waiting to see these strange new arrivals, some perched on thick sloping branches that resembled new tree trunks growing out of the main plant, others crammed together on the main trunk. The crowd parted as Matuei led the visitors towards the platform at the centre of the space. Suhaar walked at the rear of the procession with an arrow held loosely in his hand, the tip of which was vaguely directed at the spine of the marine in front of him.

As they reached the clearing at the middle of the gathering, they saw the Omaticaya's _Tsahik_ Mo'at waiting for them. She was dressed in her full regalia, with blood-red fabrics and beads draped low around her neck. On either side of her broad leonine brow her golden eyes flicked from Grace to the two humans. She registered each briefly with a nod, but her face remained deadpan and the other high-ranking Na'vi around her – five guards with bows drawn, Eytukan a few feet behind her, the two skinny daughters who hovered uncertainly at his waist – appeared agitated. One of the marines accidentally caught the eye of the younger princess as he passed, prompting a defensive growl from the archer in front of her. Rows of dagger-sharp teeth that looked like they had been filed down into fearsome points glistened as he drew back his lips. The marine quickly glanced back down at the ground.

Presently, the procession stopped in a single file in front of Mo'at. She nodded to Matuei and Suhaar, who bowed and withdrew, walking back to join the front row of the watching clan. Moments later, Mo'at's gaze fixed on Grace.

'I am Mo'at. I speak for the Omaticaya, and Eywa speaks through me. And all three of us are curious as to how and why it is, traveller, that you walk in the skin of one of the People. Please explain.' She gestured to Grace with an open hand, soliciting a reply.

'Thank you for granting me an audience, Mo'at. It's a great honour. My name is Dr. Grace Augustine. I assure you that my appearance is not intended to deceive you.'

A small smile crept across Mo'at's face. 'I could be blind and not be deceived by your appearance, doctor. The way you move and smell is enough to give you away to any true Na'vi. But I wanted to know what the purpose of this contrivance is. You strike fear into my clan by coming here. I would rather that their hearts were enlightened and at ease than that their arrows should be pointed at your chests.'

Grace spoke steadily and calmly. 'My … companions and I come from another planet. We are human beings, of the planet Earth. We have travelled a great distance in search of other civilisations with whom we might form alliances. Pandora is one of the few places we have found that bears some similarity to our own world. We've studied it, admired it. But its air is toxic to us. Without breathing apparatus,' and here she tapped on one of the marine's exopack visors with a fingernail, 'or some other biological means of surviving within Pandora's atmosphere, we couldn't make contact.'

Mo'at's smile remained. 'Perhaps the fact that it is toxic to you is a sign that you were never meant to come here.'

Grace grinned. 'I'm afraid that's how human nature works. If there's somewhere we weren't intended to be or something we weren't made to do, it becomes an obsession for us. We live for curiosity and we're cursed by it, but it's not incompatible with respect. I've come to extend the hand of friendship on behalf of my species. Whether you decide to accept or refuse it is entirely in your power. Whatever your decision, we'll honour it.'

'Thank you for the formality,' said Mo'at. 'But I believe some Na'vi on this planet must have already decided. This is not the first time the human race has risked having its throat cut by one of Pandora's clans – otherwise you would not speak our language, assume our form or examine our ways here.'

Grace nodded. The introduction _had _been nothing more than a formality. It was not only a case of no deception being intended, but also of no deception being possible.

'Perhaps I also need to enlighten you,' said Mo'at. 'The presence of a foreign species on Pandora has been common knowledge to all _Tsahik_ for a long time. The Omaticaya may not have been the human race's first point of contact, but rest assured I have heard of your kind and your interactions with other clans. Your eagerness to learn, your taking … "samples" from us so that you might try to replicate our form in the interests of practicality: do not worry, I know all these things. I only regret that the starving thief has spent a hundred years stealing fruit from our garden before thinking to ask our permission. But it cannot be helped, and I'm glad that you did finally think to ask.'

Grace sensed that the clansmembers behind her were moving and whispering among themselves restlessly. Mo'at must have also noticed because she raised her arms and lowered them slowly, palms down, to pacify the crowd.

'The _Olo'eyktan _and I didn't want to worry our clan prematurely,' she explained. 'If our world was nothing more than a passing fancy for your kind, it would only cause unnecessary upset. Clearly, though, our fates are supposed to be tied. Eywa has accepted it, and I must too.' Mo'at stepped down from the platform and approached Grace, now level with her. 'I'm sure you have come to ask for something further, though.'

'Yes,' said Grace. 'My hope was that I could extend the dialogue further with the Na'vi.'

'In what way?'

'We've studied you. It's only fair that we share something of who we are and our ways with you. I've come to propose a series of discussions or classes between our people. As you say, we've been a bit too much behind-the-scenes, as it were, and if the human race is to take our friendship seriously, there should be some understanding between us.'

Mo'at paused. A number of the clan peered up interestedly, though some obviously couldn't care less and had quietly returned to tending to their weapons or appearance. Eytukan shook back his hair. He gestured to his two daughters that everything would be alright and that they should sit down, then he slipped out from behind the line of guards that stood in front of him.

Mo'at's left ear flicked round, acknowledging him. 'You have something to say, Mate.'

'Yes. I cannot claim to speak for Eywa myself, but as clan leader I see it this way. Every Na'vi has the responsibility of looking forward and preparing for the seasons ahead. When one food source suffers a fall in numbers, we must make plans to rely more heavily upon other prey in the mean time to allow it to recover. When a dry spell seems likely later in the year, we need to conserve water now. When threatened with the emergence of a new disease, we must ensure that the vulnerable are kept strong and fed and that the young can provide for us what their elders no longer can.'

The younger members of the clan, Matuei and Suhaar included, pricked up their ears and leaned closer.

'Although it comes from the outside, this situation is no different,' continued Eytukan. 'If further interactions with human beings are to be our future, we have an obligation now to prepare for that event. We must be pragmatic here. I think that turning away the doctor's offer would be foolish. Whatever relations we may have with the humans, we would be in a far more advantageous position if we knew them better.' He glanced back over his shoulder at the two children behind him. 'I don't make my decision lightly. Tomorrow's triumphs and sorrows are decided entirely by how a leader chooses to act today. Some day the management of this clan will fall to my daughters, Sylwanin and Neytiri. I would rather they came to that role with wisdom and courage about how things are and will be, not ignorance and fear.'

He looked over at Mo'at expectantly. She cleared her throat.

'You must understand, Grace Augustine, that you must tell me more about this initiative of yours and I must consult with Eywa, as is customary. For my own part, though, I respect my mate's opinion on this matter.' She reached out and held Grace's five-digit hand in her four-digit one. 'We can neither of us now turn away from the other. This is our future, for better or worse.'

* * *

Kith introduced a new ream of crimson thread into his loom and began to weave it into his banner. He smiled down at Nikal, who was resting with her head on his knee. The glow of a nearby fire played over her cheek, turning the deep blue skin and its faint luminescent speckling to a flickering bloom of amber. It was late evening in the jungle, and under a grey-pink sky the Omaticaya were relaxing and eating together. The burial teams, Jake and Neytiri included, had returned home to rest. Mo'at could be seen sitting cross-legged on an upper branch, consulting with Jake and her daughter. Both the new _Olo'eyktan_ and his bride looked exhausted. They barely seemed able to keep their heads up. Mo'at presently laid a hand on Jake's shoulder and smiled reassuringly. She gestured to the roasting meat, then to the area where the clan had re-hung their vine hammocks. Jake grinned somewhat weakly and draped his arm around Neytiri's waist, and the pair set off towards the fire-pit, where they were greeted enthusiastically by several younger clansmembers. Kith looked down at his feet and breathed out heavily.

'Are you due to head out again tomorrow?' asked Matuei quietly from where she was sat several feet away, eating and watching him work.

Kith nodded. He kept weaving. 'It's not all bad,' he said. 'This should be the last time I go out there for quite a while. Then I can concentrate on this, and the tilling. Maybe I'll even get the chance to go on a proper hunt. It'll be nice for things to go back to normal, a bit.'

Matuei could tell he was still rather subdued about the task that awaited him: the search for bodies, the burials, the sad and necessary clean-up after the battle with the RDA that they had all tried to overlook for as long as they possibly could. She considered telling him about her extraordinary experience with the injured _ikran_ a couple of nights before, but soon thought better of it. Kith was remarkably easy-going and non-judgmental about the humans despite the horrible things he had seen, but it still felt quite risky to tell him or anyone else about actually calling on the help of a human to fix a problem which, in the eyes of the more conservative Omaticayans, had been created by the humans to begin with. She looked over soundlessly at the banner. He was still working away at the green and red diamond pattern he had started several weeks ago. It was coming together nicely.

'Ah, Kith, you work so steadily,' Matuei said. 'Don't you get tired?'

Kith shrugged. 'I enjoy it. It's relaxing.'

Matuei thought back to her own rather chaotic attempts at weaving, where she had only succeeded in tying an increasingly complicated string of brightly coloured knots and bows around her fingers: relaxing was hardly the right word. It was certainly a skill that you were either born with, or forever failed to master.

'And I know it sounds a little weird, but I look at it this way – however hard I try, I can't make the trees grow any faster or the flowers blossom any sooner, but with this, I can create something and nurture it just as fast or as gradually as I like.' Kith sighed. 'Sometimes it feels like there are fewer and fewer things I can control. There are times when even, even this,' he said, gesturing to the banner, 'seems so futile. I create things with my hands every day, but-' He looked down at Nikal. 'But the one thing I can't create is the one thing that would make her happy.' He chuckled and stroked back a few strands of hair from his mate's face. 'She looks so peaceful. You'd never guess that she spent the whole day nagging and throwing stuff at me.'

Matuei laughed. 'That's Nikal. The bigger the bump she leaves on your head, the more she loves you.' She pressed Kith's hand gently. 'It will be alright, Kith. You'll see.'

Suddenly a loud crack shot through the air, bringing several Na'vi to their feet. Nikal jerked awake and automatically cuffed Kith around the ear with a cry of 'Keep it down … you … uh?' She had just noticed what had now caught the entire clan's attention.

The horizon had burst into a scattershot explosion of grey and orange plumes, accompanied by an ear-splitting barrage of gunfire. The assault lasted a full minute, and then everything fell quiet again. The Na'vi began to murmur among themselves, and Matuei was about to speak when the solid blunt blow of a single bullet plugging into flesh rang out and echoed through the forest. Several women shrieked. The noise was repeated four more times, and that was the end of it. The clan's worst fears surfaced in an instant.

'It's happening again!'

'You don't think it was-'

'It's those damn humans. I said it at the time, only a fool would let any of them stay here after what they did!'

Matuei was shocked to see Nikal join in with the more aggressive shouts and accusations. The change in her appearance was quite startling. Her braided hair and the furry tip of her tail bristled, her back was deeply arched and her face was contorted in a terrible snarl.

'Everybody calm down!' yelled Jake. The clamouring of the crowd gradually petered out as they turned to look at him. He murmured something in Neytiri's ear, and she began to translate for him as he spoke aloud to the clan.

'That outburst was definitely human gunfire, I can't argue with that, but the people who were allowed to stay when we evicted the RDA are my friends. I know what they're like. They all respect the Na'vi and the forest. They wouldn't just go around blasting it to bits. Look, first thing in the morning we'll head out and investigate. Right now it's too dark.'

'Nonsense!' shouted one of the men. 'The humans can't see an inch in front of their own noses at night. We'll be on top of them before they have the slightest clue what's going on.'

'Whoever they are, they probably have night-vision gear if they're out this late,' said Jake, 'Which means they'll be able to see us just as well as we can see them. If they're still alive, they'll be on alert now. It'll be much safer to go in daylight.'

'We'll cover the land in sections as small groups,' said Neytiri. 'Everybody try to get some sleep. Tomorrow may be a long day.'

After this terse command, she hopped back up to where Mo'at was sat now facing out into the forest. She began to reach out to touch her mother's shoulder, then stopped. Mo'at did not glance up at her or even react to her being there. The shaman's shoulders were slumped and rounded, and Neytiri noticed that she suddenly looked very old and small. Neytiri leaned forward with a soft murmur of 'Mother?' She could see from this new angle that Mo'at's eyes were blank, gazing out at the treetops but not seeing. When Neytiri extended her arms again to envelope her in a hug, Mo'at yielded as if her entire body had gone limp. She curled into her daughter's shoulder and raised a hand up to cover eyes brimming with tears.

Matuei stood thinking for a moment, her pupils darting back and forth hesitantly. After a moment, she straightened up.

'Nikal, Kith – I've got an idea, but I need you to come with me,' she whispered, squeezing Nikal's arm.

'Where are you going?' asked Nikal, reaching out to hold her back.

'You'll see when we get there. It'll all make sense then,' Matuei said. 'There's no time to lose. Tell Rana and Axeu to come along too.'

'Matuei, we've been ordered to stay here till morning,' said Kith. 'It's too dangerous!'

'Trust me!'

Kith sighed. 'Is it just me, or is that what she always says before she does something crazy.' He looked to his right and noticed that Nikal had already started after Matuei. 'Nikal? Nikal! You can't be serious-'

'Serious? What about you, Kith: are you serious about hanging around here all night when there could be warriors dying out there? Come on. I can't just stand around doing nothing.'

Kith grunted in frustration and began to wander after the two women, dragging his feet. He shook his head.

'It's just like my father said,' he grumbled. '"It's never just the woman's family you marry into, it's her whole crazy circle of friends too." And did I listen?' He kicked a pebble out of his way. '_Skxawng…_'

* * *

A short while after her meeting with Mo'at, Grace was told that she could go ahead with her proposal. Several lengthy negotiations with the bodies which had organised the funding for the avatar programme later, she was permitted to conduct her classes without military guards being present. As a result, the atmosphere relaxed considerably. The majority of her attendees were children, clearly encouraged to participate once Eytukan and Mo'at permitted their daughters to come to the classes. The youngsters reacted uncertainly towards the human guards: in basic physical terms it was rather confusing to find creatures as tall as them assuming a similar level of authority to the larger adults. In addition to hampering the good will between species, Grace and the other language teachers enlisted in the avatar programme alongside her soon became aggravated by how often the children were distracted by the guards. Having a human body to hand made for a useful teaching aid at times, but Grace was soon tired of their continual presence and more than aware of how tired they were of apparently being subjected to ridicule in an alien tongue. Even if the salaries, pensions and financial supports for army and marines had greatly improved over the last fifty years, sometimes you just weren't paid enough to tolerate being prodded and poked like a specimen in a Petri dish.

The school that would later be built was only a makeshift shack then, with walls just stable enough to support a whiteboard and a few posters filled with numbers, letters, photographs and drawings of insects, cats and grazing herds unfamiliar to the Na'vi. The class and Grace sat together on the floor in a circle.

One morning Grace took a slim package from her pocket and began to unwrap it. At the sound of peeling paper and foil the children virtually scrambled over one another to take a closer look. Grace laughed gently and sat up higher on her heels. She snapped part of the package's contents off and held it up so that the entire class could see.

'What is it?' the younger ones chirped.

'It's a human delicacy,' smiled Grace. 'It's called chocolate. I brought some so you could try it. It's going to help us with the next thing I'm going to teach you.' She noticed that some of the older, warier students were looking at the treat uneasily, and quickly added, 'It's fine. It's completely safe for you to eat. I checked.'

The older pupils relaxed and started to edge nearer along with the children. Grace continued breaking up the bar.

'There's enough for each of us to have a piece. So I'm going to pass it round and we're going to try it together. No gobbling it up as soon as I hand it to you – this is something we savour.'

Once the chocolate was distributed, they ate it together. Some of the children giggled at the way it melted on their tongues. A couple of the women in the class closed their eyes in pleasure.

'Mmmm. That is real chocolate. First lesson for today: if anyone else who comes here offers you chocolate, turn it down. Life's too short for that crappy army-issue stuff, believe me. Uh-' Grace caught herself, paused a moment, then pointed to the wrapper. 'This stuff is specially imported, Belgian, the real thing. Got a whole private stock of it just for me.'

'How much of it?' one boy asked.

'That, Telnin, is for only a woman to know and a man never to question.' She looked up at the class. 'Watch out, girls: this is the guy who's going to be "accidentally" asking how much you weigh when you're older.'

The children in the class looked confused, but the adults laughed. Grace stood up and uncapped a dry-erase marker pen. She started to write on the whiteboard.

'"I gave _my _chocolate to you. Now it is _yours_,"' she said in English. She reverted back to Na'vi: 'This is another of our cases. Do you all remember those, what we've done so far?' The class nodded. 'Course you do. What we're going to cover today is the genitive case. It's for when you're talking about things that belong to you. So, "_my_ chocolate."'

She started to write out the different pronouns – _my_, _your, our, his, her, their_ – in English and Na'vi, and asked, 'Can any of you give me an example in Na'vi? Just a short sentence, nothing fancy.'

After a short pause, one of the girls raised her hand. Grace nodded to her.

'Liyii, sock it to me.'

'My father is the best _taronyu_ in our clan.'

Grace laughed. 'Ooh, controversial. Very good, Liyii.' She wrote the sentence in Na'vi on the board and then provided the translation below. She gestured to the table of pronouns. 'Do you see where these sorts of words fall in the sentence? Just before the nouns. Okay, see if you can figure out this next one. Can anyone give me a translation?'

She wrote a further sentence on the board in English. The students looked from it to the table of conjugations. A few hands went up hesitantly.

'His _ikran_ flies very fast …?'

'Perfect! Now, let's try using some different pronouns, see if we can pronounce them right.' She spoke firstly in Na'vi: 'After me: my _ikran_ flies very fast, your _ikran_ flies very fast. Good – now, let's try those in English-'

'You may want to rethink your example, stranger,' a voice from behind her suddenly said.

Grace looked round and saw Suhaar resting on a branch overhead. Having just returned from hunting, he had a bunch of small rat-like mammals draped over his shoulder, bound together around the legs by a thin vine. She had spotted that in class was in progress whilst returning to Hometree and had stopped off to see for himself what sorts of things the students got up to. As more of the clan had decided to attend lessons, even those who had first shown disinterest or open contempt for the initiative had become curious.

Suhaar swung himself down from the branch and walked towards Grace.

'H-how's that?' she said, looking nervously at the board.

'An _ikran_ never _belongs _to anyone,' replied Suhaar. 'They are as independent as any Na'vi. You cannot possess one, and you do it a great dishonour if you ever claim to own it.'

'I'm sorry. It was a completely random example. I just chose it for simplicity's sake.'

'Simplicity? Ah, so is that what we are to you, simple?'

'Of course you're not. I didn't mean that at all-'

Several of the adult pupils in the class got to their feet.

'Leave her be, Suhaar!' said one of the men.

'Were she only teaching adults, Nanalkti, I wouldn't bother her at all.' Suhaar gestured towards the rest of the class. 'But there are children here still learning our ways, just as she is. It strikes me as rather irresponsible to have the Na'vi teach them one thing, and this … this human another.'

'Not all of the Omaticaya feel and teach as you do,' said Nanalkti. 'Your blood follows two currents, and we-'

Suhaar snarled. 'I am as much of this clan as you are. Tipani ancestry does not change that in the least. And in any case,' he said, pointing to the board, 'these are the naïve presumptions of one who has never undertaken _Iknimaya_. It is our responsibility to ensure that our children are not confused by her influence.'

'Look, I'm sorry I caused this problem,' said Grace.

'There's no need for you to apologise,' said Suhaar quietly. 'I expected no more from you. A stranger descending from the sky, wounding he who flies with me with arrows made of lead, immediately insisting upon an audience with the highest ranks of the clan and intimidating them into accepting your demands. No. How could I expect anything approaching respect from the likes of you?'

He began to walk away, murmuring, 'I only regret that it is my first impressions that should prove true, and not my mate's….'

Grace watched him go, looking rather annoyed at herself. She picked up a cloth and wiped off half of the notes she had made on the board in a resigned manner. It was overly optimistic, she thought, to hope that the entire clan would warm or, at the very least, adjust to her, but to hear that she was still thought of as a stumbling interloper… She wanted to scream that she was not the intruder, that she meant no harm, and that she was not the one they should fear. She had fought with the guilt every single day. Every single day, falling more and more in love with Pandora whilst cursing herself for having even learned of its existence in the first place. Back on the dying Earth, she had kept her study of this alien world as private and as untainted by outside interests as she could. Yet no researcher was an island, especially on a planet hungry for hope, a future and the land they considered necessary to creating that future. A species with no more oceans to cross, no more virgin continents to discover. Had she herself sold out by appealing for further financing for her research when it was offered, or was the corporate interest in Pandora inevitable regardless of her work? She was furious at herself for those instances where she accidentally caused the Na'vi offence, but that anger was nothing compared to her fear that worse was to come for the Na'vi, and that in her love for them and her determination to connect with them, she had damned them.

'Grace?' piped up one of the children. 'Is something wrong?'

She turned round and smiled down at the youngsters. She sat herself back down on the ground cross-legged so that she was level with them once again. 'Made a silly mistake. What can I say, I'm only human. Shall we start over?'

* * *

Author's note: A quick apology for formatting goofs: Sorry, I only just now looked at how the uploaded files appear online – I hadn't realised had booted out all the symbols I used to separate the different scenes in each chapter. Apologies to any readers who have already been following the story as I post this: it looks horrible and very confusing, and I'm genuinely honoured that everyone who's read/reviewed/faved, etc. has actually stuck with it, so thanks very much. I've now reformatted it so that the changes in scene are clearly marked.

Okay, so I said this chapter might start to clarify things a bit, and I lied; it's full of loose ends and ambiguities. I'm sorry this story is turning out so slow-burning: I just don't like bludgeoning people round the head with plot points and action sequences. I don't have that blockbuster mentality, sadly. To clarify for any readers who are thinking "Dude, where's my linear timeline?", the first and third segments of this chapter are flashbacks, following on from the past time-frame I introduced in Chapter 2. The next chapter will all be flashback/back-story for pacing reasons. I'll be going back to present-day stuff for Chapter 6, though. There you go: usually I can't think ahead far enough to plan my own lunch, but I'm all over this fic planning business (only because it's tonnes easier than planning a 100 000 word thesis). Swings and roundabouts, in't it.

Okay, as with the end of Chapter 2 I'm potentially walking on dangerous ground having OCs interact with canon characters at a significant point in their 'history', but that's just how the plot seems to have developed. I wanted to compensate for that by putting Matuei and Suhaar in a position where they're more witnessing/reacting to Grace turning up and starting the school rather than necessarily affecting what's happening there, so ultimately I don't think I'm doing much damage to continuity. Please feel free to whine at me if you feel otherwise (or else hold off till Chapter 6, where there'll probably be even more to whine about). Having a shot at writing the meeting between Grace, Mo'at and Eytukan felt necessary: I just wanted to use it as an opportunity to tackle what seemed to me like a bit of a sticky chicken-and-egg situation as regards Grace first appearing to the Omaticaya as her avatar, and the whole matter of why the hell the Na'vi would be even vaguely interested in learning about another species that they definitely didn't go in search of themselves. I'm making the assumption here that Grace already knows that the relationship between humans and Na'vi will go a bit beyond just exchanging local knowledge, and that the avatar programme already has some financial links to the military (the marine escort is supposed to hint at that), but that she doesn't anticipate the lengths that the RDA will go to, i.e. mining, bulldozing, all that jazz, just yet.

Oh yes, and I didn't just make up the thing about Neytiri having a sister – apparently Sylwanin is a canon character. I gather that she dies before the film's narrative begins. I just stuck her in on the off-chance that of all the mistakes I've probably made so far that'll be the one that I get told off about.


End file.
